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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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IMMERSION, 



THE ACT OF CHRISTIAN BAPTISM 



BY 



JOHN T. CHRISTIAN, A.M., D. D., 

Corresponding Secretary of the Convention Board of Mississippi Baptists^ 



k£0L . 






LOUISVILLE, KY. 

BAPTIST BOOK CONCERN 

1891 






Copyright, 1891, 
By J. T. christian. 



PREFACE. 



THIS book is the result of long and patient 
investigation. It was with a view of satisfy- 
ing the author's own mind that these studies were 
begun, and with no intention of writing a book. 
Many large libraries have been gone over, and a 
somewhat extensive correspondence conducted. 
Many of the books quoted are exceedingly rare, and 
many more locked up in foreign languages, and it 
occurred to me that these authorities might be of 
service to those who have neither the time nor 
opportunity to investigate so large a range of lit- 
erature. 

I am under obligation to many friends who have 
assisted me in divers ways. I cordially mention 
my lifelong friend. Prof Arthur Yager, Ph. D., 
of Georgetown College, Ky. He was especially 
helpful in translating French and German authors. 
And I am indebted to Rev. Basil Manly, D. D., 
LL. D., of the Southern Baptist Theological Sem- 
inary, for suggestions in Hebrew and Syriac. 

This book has been written in no controversial 
spirit, and it is given to the public with a sincere 
desire to do good. That it is not faultless the author 
is well aware, but he does believe that t4ie propo- 
sitions lain down are in accord with the Holy 
Scriptures, and in harmony with the universal 
teachings of history. 

(3) 



^'M 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

CHAPTER T. 
The Law of Baptism and Principles of Interpretation. 7 

CHAPTER II. 
What the Lexicons say 16 

CHAPTER III. 
What the Classical Writers say 23 

CHAPTER IV. 
Does Baptizo Necessarily Mean to Drown ? 31 

CHAPTER V, 
What the Septuagint says 36 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Baptism of John 46 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Baptism of Jesus 56 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Baptism Mentioned in Mark vii : 1-4 63 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Baptism of the Three Thousand 71 

CHAPTER X. 
The Baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch 83 

CHAPTER XI. 
Paul's Baptism 89 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Baptism of the Jailer 94 

CHAPTER XIII. 
The Argument from Rom. vi : 4. . . 102 

CHAPTER XIV. 
What the Greek Fathers say 108 

(5) 



6 CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

CHAPTER XV. 
What the Latin Fathers say 114 

CHAPTER XYI. 
" The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles " 119 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Argument from History in favor of Immersion 128 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Sprinkling a Heathen Custom 136 

CHAPTER XIX. 
The Baptism of the Sick 151 

CHAPTER XX. 
The History of Sprinkhng 158 

CHAPTER XXI. 
What the Councils of the Roman Catholic Church say. 167 

CHAPTER XXII. 

The Testimony of the Liturgies and Rituals 176 , 

CHAPTER XXIIL 
What the Poets say 182 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
What the Greek Church says 192 

CHAPTAR XXV. 
What the Catholic Church says 204 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
What the Episcopalians say 213 

CHAPTER XXVII. 
What the Presbyterians say 223 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
What the Methodists say 233 

CHAPTER XXIX. 
What the Syriac says 240 



IMMERSION. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE LAW OF BAPTISM, AND THE PRINCIPLES 
OF INTERPRETATION. 

r I iHE law of baptism is laid down in Matthew 
-^ xxviii: 18-20, in the words of our Saviour: 
^'All power is given unto me in heaven and in 
earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them 
to observe all things whatsoever I have com- 
manded you : and, lo, I am with you alway, even 
unto the end of the world. Amen." 

The terms of this commission are plain enough. 
I will apply some of the principles of constitu- 
tional and statutory law to the law of baptism; 
and in it will be found an unanswerable argument 
in favor of immersion. Greenleaf, a very able 
lawyer, applied the principles of law to the Four 
Gospels, and gave to the world one of the strong- 
est books on Christian Evidence extant; and I am 
sure that from the same standpoint the argument 
for immersion is impregnable. 



8 IMMERSION. 

I will call attention to a few of the fundamental 
principles of law : 

1. Words are to be used in their primary or his- 
torical sense, and in the meaning in which they 
can be proven historically to have been used. Na 
secondary or figurative sense can be applied ta 
words as long as the historical sense can be ap- 
plied. This is a fundamental rule, and is laid 
down in all of the law books. 

Blackstone, on the interpretation of law, says: 
*^ Words are generally to be understood in their 
usual and most known signification ; not so much 
regarding the propriety of grammar, as their gen- 
eral and popular use. '' (Com. 59.) Greenleaf says: 
**The terms of every written instrument are to be 
understood in their plain, ordinary and popular 
sense.'' (On Evid. 278.) 

This idea is as applicable to theology as it is ta 
law. So clear is this that the celebrated Presby- 
terian author, Dr. Charles Hodge, says : " The 
fundamental interpretation of all writings, sacred 
and profane, is that words are to be understood in 
their historical sense in which it can be historic- 
ally proved that they were used by their authors,, 
and intended to be understood by those to whom 
they were addressed. The object of language i& 
the communication of thought. Unless words are 



THE LAW OF BAPTISM. 9 

taken in the sense in which those who employ 
them know they will be understood, they will fail 
of their design. " (Systemat. Theol., vol. 1, p. 376.) 

If this rule holds good, immersion is inevitably 
the act of Christian baptism. Beyond doubt the 
historical sense of the word baptizo is to dip. 
Even if it could be proven, which is not the case, 
that some tropical definition favored aifusion, still, 
with this rule m sight, baptism logically would 
be performed by immersion. We have no right 
to give the word an arbitrary meaning. This 
principle is recognized in the interpretation of all 
law ; why not in the law of baptism ? 

2. We have no right to put any arbitrary con- 
struction upon, or to draw any strained inference 
from, the law of baptism. The New Testament is 
to be plainly construed, and from its express com- 
mands there can be no departure. 

Upon no point is the law more explicit than 
upon this. "J. verbis legis non est recedendum: 
from the words of the law there can be no de- 
parture. A court of law will not make any in- 
terpretation contrary to the express letter of the 
statute; for nothing can so well explain the mean- 
ing of the makers of the Act as their own direct 
words." (Brown, 622.) " When a law is plain and 
unambiguous, whether it be expressed in general 



10 IMMERSION. 

or limited terms, the legislators should be inter- 
preted to mean what they have plainly expressed, 
and consequently no room is left for construction. 
Possible or probable meanings, where one is plainly 
declared in the instrument itself, the courts are not 
at liberty to search for elsewhere." . . . "That 
which the words declare is the meaning of the 
instrument, neither courts nor legislators have 
a right to add to or take away from its meaning. " 
(On Constit. Lim. 68, 70.) Mr. Cooly continues: 
" In the case of all written laws it is the intent of 
the lawgiver that it is to be enforced. But this 
intent is to be found in the instrument itself It is 
to be presumed that language has been employed 
with sufficient precision to convey it, and, unless 
examination demonstrates that the presumption 
holds good in the particular case, nothing will 
remain except to enforce it." (Constit. Lim. Q8.) 
Mr. Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States, 
said : " The government of the United States can 
claim no powers which are not granted to it by 
the Constitution; and the powers actually granted 
must be such as are expressly given, or given by 
necessary implication." (1 Wheat. 326, Brown.) 
"The intention of the testator ought to be the 
only guide of the court to the interpretation of 
his will ; yet it must be his intention, as collected 



THE LAW OF BAPTISM. 11 

by the words employed by himself in his will. No 
surmise or conjecture of any object, which the tes- 
tator may be supposed to have had in view, can 
be allowed to have any weight in the construction 
of his will unless such object be collected from the 
plain language of the will itself. " (555.) 

These writers all say that from the words of the 
law there must be no departure. Now this is per- 
fectly evident. If this commission of Christ means 
immersion, we can not depart from the letter and 
allow any other act. If it were " possible,^' or 
^'even probable,'' that sprinkling or pouring was 
the act of baptism, yet they could not be admitted, 
since immersion is "the historical or primary'' 
sense of the word baptizo. No room is left for 
construction, and we are to take the Scriptures just 
as they read. We are not to read meanings into 
the word of the living God. 

3. If the commission is not perfectly plain and 
explicit in all of its terms it is of no binding force 
whatever. This the law books plainly teach. The 
maxim is, ubi jus incentum ; ubi jus nullum, when 
the law is uncertain, there is no law. The learned 
Judge Pothier says : "A law that is hopelessly 
obscure is of no binding force, and no person can 
be held responsible for obedience to it." Green- 
leaf remarks : " In other words, in merely gener- 



12 IMMERSION. 

ally speaking, if the court, placing itself in the 
situation in which the testator or contracting party- 
stood at the time of executing the instrument, and 
with full understanding of the force and import of 
the words, cannot ascertain his meaning and in- 
tention from the language of the instrument thus 
illustrated, it is a case of incurable and hopeless 
uncertainty, and the instrument is so far inopera- 
tive and void/' (On Evid. 300.) 

Jesus Christ can claim no authority that is not 
expressed in his commands; and it would be a 
reflection to say that he did not make himself per- 
fectly clear. If no man can tell what the commis- 
sion means, or if it means any one of a dozen 
things, then is baptism not binding upon us. But 
such a proposition is at once sacrilegious and ab- 
surd. 

4. The expression of one thing is the exclusion 
of another. If immersion is expressed then is 
sprinkling and pouring excluded. There is ^' one 
baptism,'^ and not three. Coke says : " The ap- 
pointment or designation of one is the exclusion of 
another; and that expressed makes that which is 
implied to cease. " (Coke-Lit. 210.) And Brown 
says : *^ If authority is given expressly, though by 
affirmative words, upon a defined condition, the 
expression of that condition excludes the doing of 



THE LAW OF BAPTISM. 13 

the act authorized under other circumstances than 
those so defined. " (653.) 

Unquestionably the Scriptures teach that baptism 
is by immersion, and affusion is thus rejected by 
this law of exclusion. 

5. It would be of no service to us if Christ had 
commanded us to be baptized, if we could not 
know what he meant. Mr. Coke says : " It avails 
little to know what ought to be done, if you do 
not know how it is to be done.'' "Where any 
thing," says Brown, " is commanded, ev'ery thing 
by which it is to be accomplished is also com- 
manded. " (482.) Certainly there would be no 
doubt around the last command the Son of God 
ever gave. 

6. Next to the authority of the New Testament, 
which is paramount, the admissions of learned 
Pedobaptists is the strongest proof we can possibly 
offer. The admission of the adverse party, when 
deliberately made, is the strongest authority in a 
court of law. The principle is the same whether 
applied to civil or criminal matters. Starkie and 
Greenleaf both put this proposition in the strongest 
terms. Greenleaf says : " It is generally agreed 
that deliberate confessions of guilt are among the 
most effectual proofs of the law. Their value 
depends on the supposition that they are deliberate 



14 IMMERSION. 

and voluntary, and on the presumption that a 
ra^tional being will not make admissions prejudicial 
to his interest and safety, unless when urged by 
the promptings of truth and conscience. Such 
confessions, so made by a prisoner, at any moment 
of time, and at any place, subsequent to the per- 
petration of crime, and previous to his examina- 
tion, before the magistrate, are at common law 
received in evidence as among proofs of guilt. '^ 
(On Evid. 215.) 

There 'can be but one conclusion in regard to 
the hundreds of pedobaptist scholars who have 
admitted that baptism was originally by immersion. 
The truth forced them to this conclusion. I empha- 
size this fundamental principle of the law of evi- 
dence, that the admissions of the adverse party, 
against his or her interest or opinion, is the best of 
evidence in law, and is an estoppel in the contro- 
versy. I claim that the admissions of the best 
pedobaptist scholars of this and every other age, 
forever close out affusion as baptism. 

The law requires absolute obedience, and we 
have no right to change or in any wise alter its 
demands. No crime is greater than disobedience." 
(Jenks, Cent. Car. 77.) " Obedience is the essence 
of the law." (11 Coke 100.) Obedience is the 
crowning grace of all. It is that ^^ principle, I 



THE LAW OF BAPTISM. 15 

mean, to which Polity owes its stability, Life its 
happiness. Faith its accoptance, Creation its con- 
tinuance." This is the principle that recognizes 
the well nigh forgotten truth that Christ is Lord 
as well as Saviour. It is a far reaching truth, and 
strict obedience to it carries us into the immediate 
presence of God. No more significant words are 
in the Bible than those of Jesus Christ, " Ye are 
my friends if ye do whatsoever I have commanded 
you.'' 



16 IMMERSION. 

CHAPTER II. 
WHAT THE LEXICONS SAY. 

^TTHEN we desire the definition of a word we 
^ ^ naturally turn to a dictionary, or lexicon, for 
its meaning. This I now do. I present only such 
authorities as I have before me; and take no state- 
ment at second hand. These writers are certainly 
competent witnesses. These Greek lexicons were not 
written by Baptists, but by Pedobaptist scholars. 
As Mr. Greenfield expressed it: "I wish it to be 
distinctly understood that I am neither a Baptist, 
nor the son of a Baptist ; nor is it my business to 
make a defense of their cause.'' 

Sometime since I wrote Dr. Gross Alexander, 
Professor of New Testament Exegesis in Vander- 
bilt, the great Methodist University of the South, 
asking him to kindly mention two Greek lexicons — 
one on Classical and the other on the New Testament 
Greek, that he regarded as the very best. He wrote 
by return mail, in reply: "The seventh edition of 
Liddell and Scott, Harper & Bros., N. Y., is the 
best Greek lexicon for general use. I emphasize 
seventh; for as compared with former editions it is 
a new book. The very best New Testament lexicon 



WHAT THE LEXICONS SAY. 17 

is that of J. H. Thayer, Greek-English lexicon, pub- 
lished also by Harper & Bros." 

Dr. C. C. Hcrsman, President of the Southwest- 
ern Presbyterian University, at Clarksville, Tenn., 
writes me under date of Aug. 7th, 1890. He says: 
"In English the best Classical Greek lexicon is 
Liddell and Scott, the last edition. It is based on 
the great work of Passow. In the New Testament 
nothing can compare with the lexicon, of J. H. 
Thayer based on Grimm- Wilkes Clavis Novi Testa- 
raenti. Robinson's is a very good one. But Thayer, 
when used with caution and intelligence, is par 
excellence. He gives the very latest results." 

No name among Presbyterians outranks that of 
C. W. Hodge, Professor of New Testament Crit- 
icism in Princeton Theological Seminary. He 
writes, Aug. 10th, 1890, as follows: ''The best 
Classical Greek lexicon is Liddell and Scott's. The 
best New Testament Lexicon is Thayer's edition 
of Grimm." 

No scholar is likely to dissent from these opin- 
ions. Liddell and Scott are learned Episcopalian 
scholars of England. I turn to the seventh edition, 
the one all of these scholars say is the best, p. 274, 
and baptizo is defined, " to dip in or under water." 
Not a word is said about sprinkling or pouring. 
That witness is satisfactory enough. 



18 IMMERSION. 

Prof. J. H. Thaj^er, the author of the Greek- 
English Lexicon of the New Testament, is Prof, of 
New Testament Criticism and Interpretation, in 
the Divinity School of Harvard University, Cam- 
bridge, Mass. On p. 94, I read: '^ Baptizo, to dip 
repeatedly, to immerse, to submerge. In the New 
Testament it is used particularly of the rite of 
sacred ablution, first instituted by John the Bap- 
tist, afterward by Christ's command received by 
Christians and adjusted to the nature and contents 
of their religion, viz: an immersion in water.^^ 
Under baptisma he says, " a word peculiar to the 
N. T. and ecclesiastical writers, immersion, sub-' 
mersion.'^ 

To make assurance doubly sure and leave not 
a hook to hang a doubt upon I give the testimony 
of other lexicons. 

Prof. E. A. Sophocles, a native Greek, and for 
thirty-eight years Professor of Greek in Harvard 
University, in his lexicon of Greek usages in the 
Roman and Byzantine periods, B. C. 146- A. D. 
1100, Boston 1887, defines baptizo, " to dip, to im- 
merse, to sink. There is no evidence that Luke 
and Paul and the other writers of the New Testa- 
ment put upon this verb meanings not recognized 
by the Greeks.'' 

J. W. Fradensdorf, of the Taylor Institute, in 



WHAT THE LEXICONS SAY. 19 

his English-Greek Lexicon, London 1860, defines 
baptizein and baptein ^' to baptize, to dip.^' 

Dr. W. Pope, of the Berlin Gymnasium, 1842, 
1870, 1880, defines baptizo, "to dip in, to dip 
under.'' 

Wahl, Clavis, Leipzig 1853, says: ^^ BaptizOy to 
dip, to dip repeatedly, to immerse, to wash.'' 

E. W. Bullinger, Greek Lexicon and Concord- 
ance, London 1878, p. 81, says: ^^Baptizo, to 
make a thing dipped or dyed, to immerse fi[)r a 
religious purpose. By baptism therefiare we must 
understand an immersion, whose design, like that 
of the levitical washings and purifications, was 
united with the washing away of sin.^' 

Cremer, Biblico-Theological Greek Lexicon of 
the New Testament, third English edition, 1883, 
p. 126 : " baptizOy to immerse, to submerge. The 
peculiar New Testament and Christian use of the 
word to denote immersion, submersion for a relig- 
ious purpose — baptize." 

Ab. H. Stephanus, Thesaurus Grsecse Linguae, 
London 1821, vol. 3, p. 20,681, ^'baptizOj to merge, 
to immerse, also to dip." 

Hedericus, Lexicon, London, 1755, ^^baptizo, 
to merge, to immerse, to wash in water." 

*Bass, London 1859, p. 39, ^^baptizo, to dip, im- 
merse, or plunge in water. 2nd. To baptize figur- 



20 IMMERSION. 

atively, to be immersed in suffering or affliction.'' 
Suicer, Thesaurus, Amsterdam 1682, p. 622, 

^'baptizOy to immerse, to dip." 

Scapula, Genevse 1628, p. 254, ^^baptizo, to 

merge, to immerse ; also, dye, as we immerse things 

for the purpose of coloring or washing them. Also 

to immerse, to submerge, to wash in water." 
Stokius, Clavis, Leipzig 1752, ^'baptizo, by the 

force of the word indicates the idea of dipping or 

immersion. Properly speaking it is a dipping or 

an immersion in wat<3r." 

Schoettgenius, Greek Lexicon, Lugudi, Bala- 

vorum, 1755, p. 107, ^'baptizo, 1st, properly to dip, 

to immerse ; 2nd, to bathe, to wash." 

Schleusner, Glasgow, vol. 1, p. 338, ^'baptizo, 

properly to immerse, to dip, to immerse in water." 
Schrevelius, ^^baptizo, to baptize, to dip." 
Simonis, Halse, 1766, ^'hajptizo, to dip." 
Green, ^^baptizo, to dip, to immerse." 
Greenfield, ^^baptizo, to immerse, to immerge, to 

submerge, to sink." 

Donnegan, ^^baptizo, to immerse repeatedly in a 

liquid, to submerge." 

Groves, ^^baptizo, to dip, to immerse, to immerge, 

to plunge." 

Eobinson, ^^baptizo, to dip in, to sink, to im- 



WHAT THE LEXICONS SAY. 21 

G. P. Lascarides, London 1882, p. 341, ^'baptizOj 
to dip.'' 

Here is the testimony of twenty-four Greek 
lexicons ; and every one of them gives the primary 
idea of dipping. I have at hand the testimony of 
three living American Bishops, who, while they 
hold to affusion on other accounts, allow dipping 
to be the primary meaning of the word. Bishop 
John J. Keane, President of the Catholic Univer- 
sity of America, Washington, D. C, says : " The 
best dictionaries show the classical meaning of the 
Greek word baptizein is primarily to plunge, to dip." 
Henry C. Potter, Episcopal Bishop of New York, 
says : " I am quite free to say that the literal mean- 
ing of baptizo as ordinarily found in classical 
writers is, usually to plunge, to dip, immerse, or 
whatever word you want to strengthen your posi- 
tion. '^ The next is Bishop A. Cleveland Coxe, the 
editor of the American edition of the Ante-Nicene 
Fathers, who says : " The word means to dip." 

We can therefore say in the none too strong 
language of Moses Stuart, the late eminent Presby- 
terian scholar of Andover, ^^bapto and baptizo mean 
to dip, to plunge, to immerge, into any thing 
liquid. All lexicographers and critics of any note 
are agreed in this." (On Bap., p. 51.) I have here 
quoted Methodist, Episcopal, Catholic, Presby- 



22 IMMEESION. 

terian, and many other authorities. All these 
lexicons give dipping as the primary meaning ; and 
if the word has any secondary meaning it is in 
accordance with this idea. The dictionaries are, 
therefore, all in favor of dipping as the primary 
meaning of this word. 



WHAT THE CLASSICAL WRITERS SAY. 23 



CHAPTER III. 

WHAT THE CLASSICAL WRITERS SAY. 

A N appeal can always be made from the lex- 
~^-^ icons to the use of the word in the best 
authors. I now appeal to the classical Greek 
authors. I shall not discuss bapto, but confine my- 
self to baptizo, the word used for baptize in the 
'New Testament. I will begin with the oldest 
writer who used this word, and, in chronological 
order, give the statement of writers covering several 
Jiundred years. This is the philological order, and 
if the word means to sprinkle or pour we will 
■certainly find that passage. I shall give later the 
testimony of the Greek fathers ; here I only refer 
to the use of the word in the classics. There is 
no higher authority than this. 

Pindar, B. C. 522 : " For as when the rest of 
the tackle is toiling deep in the sea, I as a cork, 
above the net, am undipped (abaptistos) in water.'' 

Plato, B. C. 429 : " I perceiving that the youth 
was overwhelmed (baptizomenon) , wishing to give 
him respite," etc. "I was one of those who yes- 
terday were overwhelmed in wine." 

The Homeric Allegories, B. C. 400 : " The mass 



24 IMMERSION. 

of iron, drawn red hot from the furnace, is dipped 
(bapUzetai) in water.'' 

Alcibiades, B. C. 400: "You dipped (baptes) me 
in plays: but I in the waves of the sea dipping 
{baptizon), will destroy thee with streams more 
bitter.'' 

Demosthenes, B. C. 385 : " Not the speakers, for 
these know how to play the dipping {diabaptizes- 
thai) match with him, but the inexperienced." 

Eubulus, B. C. 380: "Who now the fourth day 
is immersed {baptizetai), leading the famished life 
of a miserable mullet." 

Evenus of Paros B. C. 250 : " Bacchas (the use 
of wine) plunges (baptizei) in sleep." 

Polybius, B. C. 205: The enemy "made con- 
tinued assaults and submerged (ebaptizon) many of 
the vessels." The vessel " being submerged (baptizo- 
mena) became filled with sea- water and confusion.'* 
"Even if the spear falls into the sea, it is not 
lost ; for it is compacted of oak and pine, so that 
when the oaken part is immersed (baptisomenon) 
by the weight, the rest is buoyed up, and it is 
easily recovered." "Themselves by themselves 
immersed (baptizomenoi) and sinking in the pools." 

Strabo, B. C. 60 : " To one who hurls down a 
dart, from above into the channel, the force of the 
water makes so much resistance, that it is hardly 



WHAT THE CLASSICAL WRITERS SAY. 25 

dipped {baptizesthai).'' "And he who enters into 
it is not immersed (baptisesthai) y but is lifted out." 
"The water solidifies so rapidly around every 
thing that is dipped into it (Lake Tatta) that they 
draw up salt crowns when they let down a circle 
of rushes." 

Diodorus, B. C. 60: "The river rushing down 
with the current increased in violence, immersed 
(ebaptize) many." "Most of the wild animals are 
surrounded by the stream and perished, being sub- 
merged (baptizomena) ; but some escaping to the 
high grounds, are saved." " His ship being sub- 
merged {baptistheisas)," "They do not whelm 
{baptizousi) the common people with taxes." 

Conon, about A. D. 1 : " Having whelmed {bap- 
tisasa) with much wine and put him to sleep." 

Josephus, A. D. 37: "And stretching out the 
right hand, so as to be unseen by any, he plunged 
the whole sword into his body." There are thir- 
teen other examples in Josephus all in the sense 
of dipping. 

Philo, the Jew, A. D. 50 : " The reason was 
whelmed {baptizomenou) by the things overlying it.'' 

Plutarch, A. D. 50 : "A bladder, then may est be 
dipped {baptize) ; but it is not possible for thee to 
sink." "The soldiers along the whole way, dipping 
{baptizontes) with cups, and horns, and goblets, 



26 IMMERSION. 

from great wine jars and mixing bowls, were drink- 
ing to one another." Thirteen other times is the 
word used in Plutarch in the sense of to dipi 

Epictetus, A. D. 50 : " You would not wish, sail- 
ing in a large and polished, and richly gilded ship, 
to be submerged (haptizesthai) .^^ 

Demetrius, the Sidonian, A. D. 50 : '' She is not 
wholly dipped (bebaptisthai), but rises above." 

Alciphron, A. D. 150: "If I am to see all the 
rivers, life to me will be whelmed (baptisthaseiai) , 
not beholding Glycera." 

Lucian, the man-hater, A. D. 135 : " If the win- 
ter's torrent were bearing one away, and he with 
outstretched hands were imploring help, to thrust 
even him headlong, dipping (baptizonta) , so that 
he should not be able to come up again." " He 
seems like one heavy-headed and whelmed {bebap- 
tismeno).^' 

Polysenus, A. D. 150 : " Philip did not give over 
dipping (diabaptizomenos) in a match with the pan- 
cratiast, and sprinkling (rainomenos) water in his 
face, until the soldiers, wearied out, dispersed." 

Dion Cassius, A. D. 150: "And others leaping 
into the sea were drowned, or, struck by the en- 
emy, were submerged (ebaptizonto).'^ There are 
seven other examples of dipping in this writer. 

Plotinus, A. D. 205 : " Death to her while yet 



WHAT THE CLASSICAL WRITERS SAY. 27 

immersed (bebaptismena) in the body, is to be sunk 
in matter." " But now, since a part of us is con- 
tained by the body, as if one has the feet in water, 
but with the rest of the body stands out above, 
towering up by what is not immersed (baptistheuti) 
in the body, we by this are attached, as to our own 
center, with that which is the center of all." " He 
does not continue happy, whelmed (baptisomtheis) 
either with diseases or with arts of magicians." 

Aristophen, A. D. 210 : " Then whelming {bap- 
iisas) potently with wine, he set me free." 

Porphyra, A. D. 233 : " When the accused an- 
swers to it, if he is guiltless, he goes through with- 
out fear, having the water as far as to the knees; 
but if guilty, after proceeding a little way, he is 
immersed (baptizetai) unto the head." 

Heimerius, A.D. 315 : "I will show you also my 
soldiers ; one fighting life-like even in the painting 
. . . and another dipping (baptisonta) with his 
hands the Persian fleet." " He was great at Sala- 
mis ; for there, fighting, he whelmed (ebaptise) all 
Asia." 

Libanius, A. D. 315 : "I myself am one of those 
immersed (baptismenon) by that great wave." He 
used the word nine other times to dip. 

Themistius, A. D. 375 : " The pilot, whether he 
saves in the voyage one whom it were better to 



28 IMMEKSION. 

submerge (baptisai).^^ "Overwhelmed {baptizome- 
non) by grief? ^ 

The ArgODautic Expedition, A. D. 375 : " But 
when Titon dipped himself into the ocean stream?' 

Chariton, A. D. 375 : " Overwhelmed {baptizo- 
menos) by design." ^^Overwhelmed (ebaptizeto) as 
to the soul?' "Overwhelmed (baptizomenon) in a 
calm?' 

Heliodorus, A.D. 390 : "Already becoming dipped 
(baptizomenon) J and wanting little of sinking, some 
of the pirates attempted to leave and get aboard 
of their own bark." "Slaying some on land, and 
plunging (bai^tizonton) others with their boats and 
huts into the lake." There are four other exam- 
ples in Heliodorus. 

Proclus, A. D. 412 : "The lo-Bacchus was sung 
at festivals and sacrifices of Bacchus, immersed 
(bebaptismenon) with much wantonness?' 

Achilles Tatius, A. D. 450; "They dip (ebap- 
tizonsi) into the water, therefore, a pole smeared 
with pitch, and open the barriers of the stream." 
" They who behold suppose the steel is plunged 
(baptizesthai) down the body, but it runs back into 
the hollow of the hilt." 

Julian, A. D. 525: "As I was once trimming, 
a garland, I found Cupid in the roses; and hold- 
ing by the wings, I dipped (ebaptis) him into wine 



WHAT THE CLASSICAL WRITERS SAY. 29 

and took him and drank him, and now within my 
members he tickles with his wings/' 

Simplicius, A. D. 650 : " Beauty in bodies, is in 
ilesh and sinews and things that make up the body, 
of animals, for example ; beautifying them, indeed, 
as much as possible, but also itself partaking of 
their deformity, and immersed (bebaptismenon) into 
it." 

Eustathius, A. D. 1100: "My whole mind was 
overwhelmed (katabaptistheis) with the affliction." 
^^My spirit then didst overwhelm (katebaptisas) , 
surging round, with whole seas of wailings." 
*' Strives to overwhelm (katabaptisai) the whole 
vessel with the waves." 

I have here quoted thirty-three authors, and 
have given fifty-six examples of the use of the 
word in these writers. These authors cover a pe- 
riod of over sixteen hundred years, commencing 
with Pindar, B. C. 522, and ending with Eusta- 
thius in the eleventh century A. D. The invari- 
able meaning of the word in all of these passages 
is to dip, or some word which conveys the same 
idea. So clear is this that Prof. Stuart says : "' It 
is impossible to doubt that the words bapto and 
baptizo have, in the Greek classical writers, the 
sense of dip, plunge, immerse, sink, etc." (Bap. 
p. 56.) 



30 IMMERSION. 

The only possible objection that can be made to 
this meaning is where the classical writers use such 
phrases as "overwhelmed in wine," "overwhelmed 
in sleep/^ "overwhelmed in sorrow," etc.; but even 
here the idea is an immersion. But this figure of 
speech is common in all languages and with almost 
every word. In the Latin this figure is very com- 
mon. Livy says, ^'Mersus vino somnoque/' or Vir- 
giPs " Somno vinoque sepidtus,^^ immersed or buried 
in wine; and Seneca speaks of the ^^ potatio quce 
mergit/^ the drink which immerses. In Shakspeare 
we read : 

" Who dipping all his faults in their affection's 
Mould, like the spring that turneth wood into stone. 
Convert his gyves into graces." — Hamlei, iv. 7. 

Cowper sings of one : 

" Immersed in soft repose ambrosial." 

We can therefore say without a doubt that 6ap- 
tizo, in classical writers, means to dip. 



DOES BAPTIZO MEAN TO DROWN. 31 



CHAPTER IV. 

DOES BAPTIZO NECESSARILY MEAN TO DROWN, 
IN CLASSICAL GREEK? 

"TT is wonderful how many inventions there are 
"^ to distort this simple Greek word ^' dip.^' There 
is a theory gaining ground in many places that 
whenever the word is used in classical Greek, of 
persons, it means more than a dipping ; it includes 
the idea of drowning, or a complete loss of life. 
Granting, for the sake of argument, this to be true, 
how could it help the cause of sprinkling? Surely 
the " sevenfold dipping " of Naaman, and the bap- 
tism of the thousands by John in the Jordan, was 
not a drowning. I have at hand the opinion of 
three learned professors of Greek. They have stud- 
ied the Greek language and literature for years and 
they have found no such meaning. 

The first is Prof. M. W. Humphreys, of the Uni- 
versity of Virginia. He says : 

University of Virginia, ") 
March 27, 1890. i 

My Dear Sir, — The term "classical Greek '^ is a 

little ambiguous. If profane literature is meant, 

there is certainly nothing in the theory you men- 



32 IMMERSION. 

tion. If classical Attic prose is meant, the word is 
too rarely used in that to justify any such generali- 
zation. The word ordinarily has a figurative use 
in "classical Greek/' such as overwhelm, as when 
a boy is flooded with questions, or a man is over 
head and ears in debt. But see the quotation from 
Hippocrates in Liddell and Scott's Lexicon. 

Yours sincerely, M. W. Humphreys. 

Dr. J. H. Thayer, of Harvard Divinity School, 
is even more explicit: 

Cambridge, Mass., 67 Sparks St., \ . 
March 17, 1890. J 

Dear Sir, — In reply to your inquiry of the 14th 

inst., permit me to say that the Greek word bap- 

tizo, when used physically in reference to persons, 

often describes an experience which issues in death. 

But that the w^ord does not always carry with it the 

idea of drowning or complete loss of life, is evident 

from many extant examples, which are to be found 

alike in the larger Greek lexicons and such special 

works as "Classic Baptism," by J. W. Dale, 1867, 

or " Meaning and Use of Baptizein/^ etc., by T. J. 

Conant, N. Y. 1864. Let it suffice to set down 

two: Polybius, who died before Christ 122, in his 

History, bk. 3, ch. 72, sec. 4, describing the passage 

of soldiers through the river Febia, which had been 

swollen during the night by a heavy shower, says, 



1 



DOES BAPTIZO MEAN TO DROWN. 33 

'^ modes heos ton maston hoi toezoi baptizomenoi, dia- 
paron'\' i. e. they cross with difficulty, those on 
foot baptized as far as the breast. Again, Strabo, 
who died A. D. 24, in his Geography, bk. 14, ch. 3. 
sec. 9, describing the march of Alexander's army on 
one occasion, says, ^' holan tan hameran hen hudatl 
gereshce tan poreian supepha mochri omphadon bap- 
tizomenoV^ ; i. e. it happened that the whole day 
long the march was made in water, the men being 
immersed (baptized) up to the navel. 

Figuratively, the word is used, as you are aware, 
of one drowned in grief, overwhelmed with care, 
immersed in debt, over head and ears in love, etc., 
etc. ; and no more excludes of necessity the notion 
of ultimate rescue than such expressions in English 
do. 

In short, the word, intrinsically and in the clas- 
sic use, no more implies that the immersed person 
of necessity loses his life thereby, than when used of 
the rite of Christian baptism it implies the drown- 
ing of every person immersed. 

Yours truly, J. Heney Thayer. 

Dr. Harnack, the greatest living Church histo- 
rian, of the University of Berlin, writes under date 
of April 2nd, 1890: "But this meaning does not 
necessarily lie in the meaning of the word. One 



34 IMMERSION. 

can be dipped (sunk) in the water without being 
drowned. The passages in which the word in ref- 
erence to persons appears in the classic authors, 
are, so far as I know, not very numerous, so that 
we can not set up a constant usage." 

These scholars state most positively that baptizo 
does not intrinsically mean to "drown.'' 

Besides the two examples mentioned by Dr. 
Thayer, we have one in Hippocrates, to which 
Prof. Humphreys refers. Hippocrates describing 
the respiration of a patient affected with inflam- 
mation and swelling of the throat, and oppressed 
about the heart, says: "And she breathed as per- 
sons breathe after having been dipped, and emit- 
ted a low sound from the chest, like the so-called 
ventriloquist." This is certainly decisive. Jose- 
phus, in his Antiquities, bk. 15, ch. 3, 3, describ- 
ing the murder of the boy, Aristobulus, who was 
drowned, by the command of Herod, by his com- 
panions in a swimming pool, says: "Continually 
pressing down and dipping (baptizontes) him while 
swimming, as if in sport, they did not desist till 
they had entirely suffocated him." If baptizo was 
equivalent to drowning, there would have been no 
necessity of repeatedly dipping him. I give only 
one more example, and that from Josephus also. 
He says of the Jews, in describing their contest 



DOES BAPTIZO MEAN TO DROWN. 35 

with the Roman soldiers on the Sea of Galilee: 
" And when they ventured to come near, they suf- 
fered harm before they could inflict any, and were 
submerged (ebaptizonto) along with their vessels 
. . . and those of the immersed (baptistheuton) 
who raised their heads, either a missile reached or 
a vessel overtook/' If baptizo meant to drown, 
these persons would not have raised their heads, 
nor would there have been any necessity that a 
vessel should overtake them. It is a drowning 
"cause that demands any such subterfuge. 

I close this argument with the statements of 
two learned German writers. 

Witsius, vol. 3, p. 368, London 1785, says: 
^^ Baptizo is altogether something more than epi- 
polazein, to float on the surface ; but less than 
dunein, to go to the bottom and perish.^' *> 

Fritzche, Com. on Matth. vol. 1, p. 120, Leip- 
zig 1826, says: "Moreover, Casaubon well sug- 
gested that dunein means to be submerged with 
the design that you may perish; epipolazeiuj to 
float on the surface of the water ; baptizesthai, to 
immerse oneself wholly, for another purpose than 
that you may perish. But that, in accordance with 
the nature of the word baptizesthai, baptism was 
then performed, not by sprinkling upon, but by 
submerging, is proved especially by Rom. vi : 4.'* 



36 IMMERSION. 



CHAPTER y. 

WHAT THE SEPTUAGINT SAYS. 
N the Greek version of the Old Testament the 



I 



word baptizo occurs only twice: "and Naaman 
went down and dipped himself seven times in the 
Jordan" ( 2 Kings 5 : 14 ) ; and " My iniquity over- 
whelms (baptisei) me." (Isa. 21 : 4.) The root word 
bapto is frequently used in the sense of to dip, and 
is so used seventeen times in the Old Testament. 
The Hebrew word that corresponds with baptizo 
is tabhal. 

I present the testimony that tabhal means to dip : 
1. It is so defined in the Lexicons. Gesenius, 
the best authority, says : " to dip, to dip in, to im- 
merse." 

Buxtorf, London ed. 1646, p. 264, says: "to 
dip, to dip in, to immerse." 

E. Castello, Lexicon Heptaglotton, London 1669, 
vol. 1, p. 1462 : " To dip, to dip in, to immerse 
(Eng. to dip or to babble). It differs from rahats, 
which means to wash a thing." 

Davies, Andover 1879 : "to dip in, to sink into." 
Gibbs, New Haven 1832: "to dip in, immerse." 
De Bernadus de Mauntfaucon, Paris 1713, Hex- 



WHAT THE SEPTUAGIXT SAYS. 37 

aplorum Orgines, vol. 1, p. 441 : " to dip or to 
immerse." 

Parkhurst, London 1823, p. 215, says: "to dip, 
to immerse, to plunge." 

Schaff, Lugduni 1786, p. 62 : " to merge, to im- 
merse." 

Stokius, Clairs, Leipzig 1653, p. 421 : " to dip, 
to dip in, to immerse. '' 

Schindlero, Lexicon Pentaglotton, Hanover 1612, 
p. 686 says: "to dip, to dip in, to immerse." 

Simonis, edited by G. B. Miner: "to dip, to dip 
in, to immerse." 

The testimony of these eleven lexicons is for dip- 
ping. 

2. The usus loquendi of the word is in favor of 
dipping. Tabhal is translated fifteen times in King 
James' version by dip; plunge once; dyed once, 
because dyeing was done by dipping. (Gesenius, 
Lex. p. 358.) Only once is tabhal thus translated, 
and in this instance the reading is doubtful. Our 
own Milton speaks of colors dipped in heaven. 
Prof Stuart refers to sixteen of these examples, 
and translates ten by dipping, three smearing on 
by dipping, two by plunge, and one by color. 
Luther translated sixteen times by dip, and once 
to dye. The Greek, German, and English trans- 
lators all render tabhal to dip. Any person famil- 



38 IMMERSION. 

iar with the Hebrew would not fail to notice that 
the construction of tabhal is totally different from 
any word which means to sprinkle or to pour, and 
is followed by a different class of prepositions. It 
usually takes the accusative with the preposition 
b, in. Besides, the Hebrew has words meaning to 
sprinkle and to pour, but they are never used in- 
terchangeably with tabhal. 

There is another word in the Hebrew Bible of 
kindred signification to tabhal. It is the Chaldee 
tabhal. The Jerusalem Targum, Jonathan's Para- 
phrase, and Onkelos all use it in the sense of to 
dip ; and in the Jerusalem Targum it translates 
tabhal in Lev. iv: 6. It appears in Dan. iv: 33, 
and v: 31, where Nebuchadnezzar was ^Svet with 
the dew of heaven." It is defined by Gesenius, 
"to sink, to press in." The primary syllable tbh 
in the Western languages expresses depth and im- 
mersion (p. 353). The Greek in these passages is 
bapto, to dip. The idea is that the dew was so co- 
pious that the king was as wet as if he had been 
dipped. Any one who has read English lit- 
erature will often find this idea. Turn to Milton's 
Comus, line 814 : 

" A cold shuddering dew dips me all over." 

John Wesley, in speaking of an anxious sinner, 
says : " On Thursday he wrestled with God till he 



WHAT THE SEPTUAGINT SAYS. 39 

Tvas wet all over with sweat as if he had been dipped 
in water/' (Journal, vol. 2, p. 152.) And Webster 
gives as a definition of the word " wet," to dip or 
to soak in liquor. 

There are three other Hebrew words in as many 
different passages which are translated by hapto and 
baptizOj but as they have not the same root I will 
briefly notice them. Lev. xi : 32 : " The unclean 
thing must be put into water (baptasetai) , and it 
shall be unclean until the evening." The Hebrew 
is habha, and is defined by Gesenius, "to hide, to 
conceal." The thing is hid in water, and hence 
dipped. Ps. Ixviii : 20: "That thy foot may be 
dipped (bapta) in the blood of thine enemies, and 
the tongue of thy dogs in the same." The He- 
brew is mahats. The Lexicons translate this pas- 
sage as the English version has done. The same 
root is found in " depths of the sea," in verse 22d. 
Isa. xxi: 4: "My heart panteth, fearfulness af- 
frighted me." The Hebrew brth is translated by 
the Greek baptisei, to dip. Stuart renders, "My 
iniquity overwhelms me." The idea is that he was 
overwhelmed by terror. 

3. I shall refer to some examples taken from 
the Talmud — later Jewish writers than the Bible. 
It will be seen that tabhal is invariably used in 
the sense of to dip, or to cover over with water. 



40 IMMEESIOX. 

"A vessel must be dipped to render it ceremo- 
nially clean" (folio 75). 

" The child of a heathen shall be dipped (tabhat), 
according to the decision of the Sanhedrim. '^ (Trea- 
tise Chetubeth, f. 11.) 

^^No one is to be considered a proselyte until 
he be circumcised and dipped {tahhal) ; he is to be 
considered as a heathen." 

The Talmud Tract Kepuduu, speaking of Jethro^ 
Moses' father-in-law, says : ^^ He was made a pros- 
elyte by circumcision and immersion in water." 

Rabbi Judah Hadzodesh, A.D. 220, says: "As to 
a proselyte, who becomes a proselyte in the even- 
ing of the passover, the followers of Shammai say, 
Let him be dipped {tahhal) and let him eat the pass- 
over in the evening. " (Tract Pheshuim cviii, s. 8.) 

According to the Jerusalem Talmud, Tract Pe- 
sah, Eliazer, the son of Jacob, is represented as say- 
ing " that some Roman soldiers w^ho kept guard at 
Jerusalerd, at the passover, being dipped {tahhal) in 
the evening of the passover. " 

To discuss the subject of proselyte baptism re- 
ferred to above is no part of my object. That bap- 
tism was by dipping, and expressed by the Hebrew 
tahhal, to cite authorities for this purpose is need-. 



That the washing of the Jews was an immersion^ 



WHAT THE SEPTUAGIXT SAYS. 41 

does not admit of a doubt. The facts all point that 
way. " From an early period," says the Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica, 9th ed. vol. 3, p. 434, "the Jews 
bathed in running water, used both hot and cold 
baths, and employed oils and ointments." 

Dr. Hibbard, the well known Methodist writer, 
says : " Within this climate lies the land of Pales- 
tine. It is such a climate as originated the demand 
for baths and pools and fountains throughout the 
East, and made the practice of bathing to be com- 
mon ; and we repeat it, it was this universal cus- 
tom of bathing — a custom so indispensable to pleas- 
ure, to decency, to health among the Orientals — 
which, more than anything else, gave a bias to their 
minds to immersion instead of affusion. " (Hibbard 
on Bapt. P. 2, p. 152.) ' 

4. I will let some Jewish scholars speak, and 
they certainly understand their own language and 
customs. 

Maimonides was born A. D. 1131, at Cordova, 
and died in 1204. He is called the Eagle of the 
Doctors and the Lamp of Israel. He was pro- 
foundly versed in the languages and in all the 
learning of the age, and became the physician of 
the Sultan of Egypt. He says: ^'Every person 
must dip his whole body . . . and whereso- 
ever in the law washing of the body or garments is 



42 IMMERSION. 

mentioned, it means nothing else than the whole 
body. For if any wash himself all over, except the 
tip of his little finger, he is still in his uncleanness. 
And if any have much hair, he must wash all the 
hairs of his head ; for that also was received for the 
body. But if any should enter into the water with 
their clothes on, yet their washing holds good." 

Leo of Modena, Rabbi of Venice, says: "He who 
desires to become a Jew, is first circumcised, and a 
few days afterwards is bathed in water in the pres- 
ence of three Rabbis who have examined him." (De 
Rit. et Usis Judseorum, par. 1, c. 3.) 

I addressed a letter to the two distinguished Rab- 
bis mentioned below, and they very promptly re- 
sponded. Rabbi Wise is widely known as a Jewish 
writer, scholar and preacher. He said : 

Cincinnati, Ohio, Jan. 3rd, 1883. 
Dear Sir, — TahJial signifies to submerge in a fluid 
or to dip a body into it, as is evident from numer- 
ous passages of Scripture. It is not rahats, to wash, 
nor nazah, to sprinkle. Yours, 

Isaac M. Wise. 

I here give the testimony of Rabbi B. Felsen- 
thal, who is an orator of recognized ability, and 
has charge of one of the largest synagogues in this 
country : 



WHAT THE SEPTUAGINT SAYS. 43 

Chicago, Jan. 1st, 1883. 
Dear Sir, — Your letter of Dec. 28th has been 
duly received. In answer I beg to state the fol- 
lowing: It seems to me almost indisputable that 
the verb tabhal means to dip or to immerse. A 
comparison of all the passages in the Old Testa- 
ment in which said verb is found — Gen. xxxvii : 
31 ; Ex. xii : 22 ; Lev. iv : 6 ; also xiv : 6, 51 ; ^N'um. 
xix: 18; Deut. xxxiii : 24; etc. — reveals the fact 
that in almost all of these passages the fluid is men- 
tioned with h prefixed {baddam)^ into which the ob- 
ject of the act is to be tabhal ; when sprinkling or 
squirting is meant, the verb zaraq, followed by the 
preposition aZ, upon, is employed. (See f. i. Ex. 
xxiv: 6, 8; xxix: 16, 20; Lev. xvii : 6; i: 5, 11; 
iii: 2, 8, 13; etc.) But aside from grammatical 
considerations and from the application of the word 
tabhal in the Old Testament, there are historical 
facts which prove beyond any doubt that tabhal, 
with the Jews in the times contemporary with Je- 
sus and the Apostles, meant to immerse. The cases 
in consequence of which Israelites could become 
levitically unclean were very numerous. Every 
one who had touched a corpse, f. i. every woman 
in her menstruation, etc., was unclean, and had to 
be cleansed by tebilah. By this Xeo-Hebraic noun, 
derived from the biblical word tabhal, the Jews 



44 IMMEESION. 

eighteen and nineteen hundred years ago, and in 
all subsequent ages, designated immersion; and 
the Mishna, the whole Talmudic literature, is full 
of pharisaic details concerning the tehilah, setting 
forth the minimum size of the bathing vessels or 
of the natural basins, the volume of the water re- 
quired, the nature of the water to be used in the 
act of purification. Historical allusions to tehilah 
which had actually taken place are also numerous ; 
and a whole book might be filled if every thing 
that has been written by Jews concerning this 
matter, in the earliest Christian centuries, w^ould 
be collected, and sifted and systematized, and com- 
mented upon. But this would be a work requiring 
long researches, and, consequently, several months^ 
time. 

The levitical laws concerning levitical purifica- 
tions have become dead letters since the destruc- 
tion of the temple in the year 70 A. C. Only in 
one instance are they still applied in the present 
day — by the very strict among the so-called ortho- 
dox Jews. Women, after the period of their men- 
struation is over, take a bath of purification. In 
the common parlance of the Jews of to-day it is 
called by the traditional name of tehilah, and for 
the act the verb tahhal is used ; and this tehilah is 
always an immersion. If there are any Jews in 



WHAT THE SEPTUAGINT SAYS. 45 

your neighborhood, who are in the least acquainted 
with the usage of their people, they will corrobo- 
rate you in this statement. 

I have attempted, dear sir, to answer your ques- 
tion as fully as can be done in a letter, and in the 
short time to me for this answer. I shall be very 
glad if it gives you some satisfaction. 

With the best regards, 

Yours truly, B. Felsenthal. 

I also addressed a letter to Prof. Franz Delitzsch, 
who was probably the most learned Oriental scholar 
in the world, and Professor in the renowned Uni- 
versity of Leipzig, Germany. He v/as also an au- 
thor of much celebrity in Old Testament exegesis, 
and I consider his admission as one of the most 
valuable made to our faith in our century. I put 
this question to him : " What is the literal mean- 
ing of the verb tahhalf^^ and he wrote this reply 
immediately under the question : " It signifies to 
immerse, the same as baptizein.^' 

I will close with a statement in Witsius' Works, 
London 1785, vol. 3, p. 364. He says of the Jew- 
ish baptisms : "The entire body was to be plunged 
at once : for if but the tip of the finger was undipt, 
and such a person was accounted to remain still in 
his uncleanness.'^ 



46 IMMEESION. 



CHAPTER yi. 

THE BAPTISM OF JOHN. 

rriHIS baptism is graphically described by the 
-^ Evangelist Mark : " John did baptize in the 
wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance 
for the remission of sins. And there went out 
unto him all the land of Judea, and they of Jeru- 
salem, and were all baptized of him in the river 
of Jordan, confessing their sins.^' (Comp. Math, 
iii: 5, 6.) 

If we were to leave out of the question the 
meaning of the word baptizOy which I have de- 
monstrated means to dip, the circumstances of this 
narrative would beyond all doubt point to immer- 
sion. John was baptizing "m the river of JordanJ^ 
He was not baptizing at the river but in the river. 
If the act John was performing was sprinkling or 
pouring, it will make good sense to substitute 
those words for baptize. Let us try it: "And 
were all sprinkled of him in the river Jordan.'' 
^'Were all poured of him in the river Jordan.'' 
That is nonsense. The people were neither poured 
nor sprinkled into the river. Let us try once 
more : "And were all dipped of him in the river 



THE BAPTISM OF JOHN. 47 

Jordan." That reading is perfectly correct, and is 
the very thing the Evangelist was saying. 

The most competent authorities fully admit that 
fhe baptism of John was an immersion in water. 
Hear them: — 

Dr. Isaac Wise, the learned Jewish Rabbi of 
Cincinnati, in answer to a pamphlet of Mr. Hea- 
ton, says in the American Israelite : " Mr. Heaton 
confounds baptism with the sprinkling of the ashes 
of the red heifer, diluted in water, when the per- 
son or thing which had come in contact with a 

dead body Any child, however, can 

see that there is also a sanitary clause involved in 
this law. There is no passage on record that John 
the Baptist thought of this case. The very fact 
that he went to the Jordan suggests that the case 
of Naaman with his leprosy, and the command of 
the prophet Elisha, was in the mind of the Baptist ; 
and Naaman undoubtedly submerged his body 
seven times in the Jordan. If Mr. Heaton, in- 
stead of quibbling on words and consulting diction- 
aries, would have inquired after facts and would 
have looked up the matter in the Mishna, and 
other Jewish authors, he would have discovered 
that the Jews had no idea of sprinkling — they 
knew the bath and submersion. Consequently 
John the Baptist submerged his converts in the 



48 IMMERSION. 

Jordan We know exactly what John 

did at the Jordan, and all the dictionaries cannot 
change the fact." 

This is unprejudiced testimony. 

The scholarly Meyer says, Com. Math. p. 77 : 
" To this, however, the immersion of the ivhole of 
the baptized person, as the metanoia, was to purify 
the whole man, corresponded with profound sig- 
nificance, and to this the specially Christian view 
of the symbolical immersion and emersion after- 
wards connected itself by an ethical necessity." 

Adam Clarke, the Methodist Commentator, at 
the end of his dissertation of Mark's Gospel, says : 
" The baptism of John was by plunging the body 
after this same manner as the washing of unclean 
persons was." 

Dr. Bennett says, and his book is an authority 
in the Methodist Church and has the endorsement 
of Bishop Hurst : " The customary mode was 
used by the apostles in the baptism of the first 
converts. They were familiar with the baptism of 
John's disciples and of the Jewish proselytes. 
This was ordinarily by dipping or immersion. 
This is indicated not only by the general significa- 
tion of the words used in describing the rite, 
but the earliest testimony of the documents which 



THE BAPTISM OF JOHN. 49 

have been preserved gives preference." (Arch. p. 
396.) 

Geikie, an Episcopalian, in his popular Life of 
Christ, p. 276, says : " It was, hence, impossible 
to see a convert go down into a stream, travel- 
worn, and soiled with dust, and, after disappearing 
for a moment, emerge pure and fresh, without feel- 
ing that the symbol suited and interpreted a strong 
craving of the human heart. It was no formal 

rite with John Bathing in Jordan 

had been a sacred symbol, at least, since the days 
of Naaman, but immersion by one like John, with 
strict and humiliating confession of sin, sacred 
vows of amendment, and hope of forgiveness, if 
they proved lasting, and all of this preparation for 
the Messiah, was something wholly new to Israel." 

Dr. Dollinger, the great Catholic historian, says : 
"At first Christian baptism commonly took place 
in the Jordan ; of course, as the Church spread 
more widely, also in private houses; like that of 
St. John, it was by immersion of the whole person, 
which is the only meaning of the New Testament 
word. A mere pouring or sprinkling was never 
thought of." (The First Age of Christ, and of 
the Church, p. 318.) 

Archbishop Kenrick, Catholic, says : "As to 

the mode in which John baptized, many circum- 
4 



50 IMMERSION. 

stances favor the opinion that it was by some kind 
of immersion/' (Bap. p. 180.) 

The statement in John iii : 23, is to the point, — 
"And John was also baptizing at ^non near to 
Salim, because there was much water there ; and 
they came, and were baptized." 

The reason given for choosing ^non is that 
there was sufficient water for baptismal purposes. 
He was baptizing in JEnon because there was much 
water there. It is objected that polla hudati, 
much water, may be translated "many waters." 
I might grant the " many streams " desired and yet 
there is sufficient water for baptizing. I read in 
Ps. xciii : 4, " The Lord on high is mightier than 
many waters, yea than the mighty waves of the 
sea." Ps. Ixxvii: 19, "Thy way is in the sea, and 
thy paths in the great waters." The same phrase 
is applied to the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. The 
translation makes no difference as to the act of 
baptism. Stuart says any small stream would fur- 
nish water for immersion. (On Bap. p. 94.) 

This is freely admitted by scholars. 

Olshausen, Com. vol. 2, p. 365, says : " John 
was also baptizing in the neighborhood, because 
the water there, being deep, afforded convenience 
for immersion." 

Lightfoot, Presbyterian, Works vol. 2, p. 121, 



THE BAPTISM OF JOHN. 51 

says : " That the baptism of John was by plunging 
the body seems to appear from those things related 
of him, namely, that he baptized in Jordan, that 
he baptized in ^non, because there was much 
water there ; and that Christ being baptized came 
up out of the water ; to which that seems to be 
parallel. Acts viii : 38." 

Calvin says : " From these words, John iii : 23, it 
may be inferred that baptism was administered by 
John and Christ, by plunging the whole body 
under water. Here we perceive how baptism was 
administered among the ancients; for they im- 
mersed the whole body in water." 

Dr. Doddridge says, Epis. vol. 1, p. 158 : "But 
nothing can be more evident than that jpolla hudata, 
many waters, signifies a large quantity of water, it 
being sometimes used for the Euphrates." 

But does not the record read. Math, iii: 11, "I 
indeed baptize you with water," but " he shall bap- 
tize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire"? 
Certainly, but you must remember this is the Epis- 
copalian translation of King James. The original 
Greek has, they shall be baptized " in water," " in 
the Holy Ghost," and " in fire." For my part, I 
would rather take what God said than to trust any 
translation. The preposition " with " here, how- 
ever, was one of instrument. It represents the 



52 IMMERSION. 

element into which the persons were to be dipped. 
They were to be baptized "with water/' and not 
"with milli''; "with the Holy Spirit/' and not 
" with honey '' ; " with fire/' and not " with wine." 
Luther's translation recognizes this distinction, . 
and translates this passage, " I indeed dip you 
with water." Meyer takes this position. He says, 
p. 81 : " It is, agreeably to the connection of hap- 
tizo, not to" be taken in an instrumental, but as in 
the meaning of the element in which baptism takes 
place." 

The literal meaning of the passage is in water 
and not with water. It is so translated by Dr. 
Bennett, Arch. p. 389 : "So that while the baptism 
of John was complete in water, en hudati, the bap- 
tism instituted by Christ was not only in water, 
but in the Holy Spirit and in fire, pneumati egio 
kai puriJ' 

Dr. George Campbell, and Robinson in his 
Greek Lexicon, translate it : " In the Holy Ghost 
and in fire." Dr. George Campbell comments as 
follows : " In water, in the Holy Spirit, vulgate 
in aqua, in spiritu sancto. Thus also, the Syriac, 
and other ancient versions. All the modern trans- 
lations from the Greek which I have seen, render 
the words as our common version does, except 
LeClerc. I am sorry to observe that the popish 



THE BAPTISM OF JOHN. 63 

translators from the Vulgate have shown greater 
veneration for the style of that version than the 
generality of Protestant translators have shown for 
that of the original. For in this the Latin is not 
more explicit than the Greek, yet so inconsistent 
are the interpreters last mentioned, that none of 
these have scrupled to render e7i to Jordana, in the 
sixth verse, in Jordan j though nothing can be 
plainer than that, if there be any incongruity in 
the expression in water, this in Jordan must be 
equally incongruous. But they have seen that the 
preposition in could not be avoided there, without 
adopting a circumlocution, and saying, with the 
water of Jordan, which would have made their 
deviation from the text too glaring. The word 
baptizein, both in sacred authors and in classical, 
signifies to dip, to plunge, to immerse, and was 
rendered by Tertullian, the oldest of the Latin 
fathers, tingere,^ the term used for dyeing cloth, 
which was by immersion. It is always construed 
suitable to this meaning.'' (Four Gos., vol. 4, p. 23.) 
Bishop Henry C. Potter, Episcopal Bishop of 
New York, says : " Now Avhat was the drift of all 
of this, but at once to interpret and illustrate the 
meaning of his own baptizings. The outward act 
— that plunging in the Jordan — meant simply, get 
your bodies clean, and so it stood for that other 



54 IMMERSION. 

call which rings through all of John the Baptist's 
preaching, "make your lives, so far as you can 
make them, white and clean." (Met. Pul., April, 
1877.) 

Prof Plumptre, in EUicott's Com., vol. 1, p. 12, 
says : "As heard and understood at the time, the 
baptism of the Holy Ghost would imply that the 
souls baptized would be plunged, as it were, in 
that creative and informing Spirit which was the 
source of hope and holiness and wisdom." 

And in the parallel passage. Acts i : 5, vol. 1, p. 2, 
Prof. Plumptre also says: "Now they were told 
that their spirits were to be as fully baptized, i. e., 
plunged into the power of the divine Spirit, as 
their bodies had been plunged into the waters of 
the Jordan." 

Neander, Life of Christ, p. 53, says : " He it 
was who should baptize them with the Holy Ghost 
and with fire ; that is to say, that as his, John's, 
followers were evidently immersed in the water, so 
the Messiah would immerse the souls of believers 
in the Holy Ghost imparted by himself; so that 
it should entirely penetrate their being, and form 
within them a principle of life." 

And the Greek father Cyril of Jerusalem, who 
lived upon the very spot where the baptism of the 
Holy Spirit occurred, understood it as an immersion. 



THE BAPTISM OF JOHN. 55 

He remarks : '' For the Lord saith, ye shall be 
immersed in the Holy Spirit not many days after 
this. Not impart the grace, but all-sufficing the 
power. For as he who sinks down into the waters 
and is immersed, is surrounded on all sides by the 
waters', so also they were completely immersed by 
the Spirit." (Instruc. VIII.) 



66 IMMEESION. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. 



ry^HE baptism of Jesus is recorded in Marki: 9- 
11 : "And it came to pass in those days, that 
Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was bap- 
tized of John in Jordan. And straightway coming 
up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and 
the spirit like a dove descending upon him ; and 
there came a voice from heaven, saying. Thou art 
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." 

This passage says in the original that he was 
baptized into the Jordan, and you can not pour or 
sprinkle a man into a river, and to say that Jesus 
was baptized with or at a river is a philological 
absurdity. There is not a man with ordinary in- 
telligence, having no purpose to serve, and without 
prejudice, could understand from this narrative 
any other thing than that Jesus was immersed into 
the Jordan. 

So plainly does this scripture teach immersion, 
that the advocates of sprinkling have moved 
heaven and earth to turn aside this testimony, and 
have sought means to explain that it has no bear- 
ing upon our duty. 



THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. 57 

I will point out a few of these subterfuges: 

1. ^*It is objected that the baptism of John 
was not Christian baptism. '^ Our Pedobaptist 
brethren borrow this objection from the Catholics. 
Archbishop Kenrick says : " We are not author- 
ized by any expression of the sacred writers, to 
consider the baptism of John as a rite of divine 
institution." (Bap. p. 16.) But the Scriptures ex- 
pressly say, that " John was sent from God ; " and 
that his baptism was not " from men," but from 
" God." Every element of Christian baptism was 
present in the act required by John. There was 
" repentance," Mark i : 4 ; ^' faith," Acts xix : 4 ; 
" confession," Mark i : 5, and then baptism. All 
the persons of the Trinity witnessed the baptism 
of Jesus and took part in it. The Father spoke 
his approval, the Holy Spirit came as a dove and 
sat upon him, while the Son was baptized. If 
Jesus received the baptism of John without a 
question, why should you seek to throw doubt 
upon it? 

2. " It was to initiate Jesus into the priest- 
hood." The misfortune of this theory is that it is 
not found in the Scriptures. This assertion is a 
pure gratuity. Jesus Christ never was a Jewish 
priest, nor did he ever lay claim to any such office. 
He was not of the priestly tribe of Levi : he be- 



58 IMMEESION. 

longed to the kingly tribe of Judah. As a Jew, 
it would have been criminal, instead of praise- 
worthy, for our Lord to have appropriated to him- 
self any of the ceremonies belonging solely to the 
tribe of Levi. This charge was never brought 
against Jesus, as it certainly would have been, had 
there been any foundation for it in pretense or 
fact. Jesus laid no claim to the Jewish priesthood. 
He was a high-priest, but it was after the order of 
Melchisedec and not of Aaron. He did not have 
^^ to be initiated into the priesthood at the age of 
thirty years ; " but he was a priest " forever after 
the order of Melchisedec ; " and he abideth " a 
priest continually." (Heb. vii : 17.) The Scriptures 
are absolutely silent on the statement that Jesus 
was a Jewish priest. 

3. But it is objected that John's baptism was 
one of purification. If I should grant that prop- 
osition, baptism could still be a dipping in 
water. I ask which would more likely represent 
purification, a few drops of water on the head, or a 
complete baptism in water? But what will 
you do with this theory in the baptism of Jesus ? 
He needed no purification. He was without sin, 
and neither was guile found in his mouth. He 
was pure and holy and separate from sinners. 
This will not bear investigation for a moment. 



THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. 59 

Hear what the learned Neander says : " The idea 
that Christ was baptized with a view of purifica- 
tion is absolutely untenable, no matter how the 
notion of purification may be modified." (Life of 
Christ, p. 64.) 

The best way to do is to take this passage as it 
reads. Jesus was immersed into the river of Jor- 
dan. So certain is this that Pedobaptist scholars 
have freely acknowledged it. I shall quote only 
a few. 

Last year Dr. Maclaren, of England, in his 
exposition of the " Sunday School Lessons," in the 
Sunday School TimeSj said that Jesus was im- 
mersed. At once a number of gentlemen wrote a 
protest to Dr. Trumbull, editor of the Times, In 
an editorial, Aug. 6th, 1889, he replied: "Most 
Christian scholars of every denomination are 
agreed in finding the primitive meaning of the 
word baptize to be ^to dip,' or Ho immerse.' 
The sweep of scholarship in and out of the Baptist 
church is in favor of immersion as a principle 
meaning of the word baptize. A very large por- 
tion of the scholars of the world agree with Dr. 
Maclaren that immersion was the mode of John's 
baptism." 

Dr. Hibbard, the standard Methodist writer on 
baptism, says : " Jesus was baptized . . . into 



60 IMMEESION. 

the Jordan. In the latter case we have no doubt 
of an outward baptism, and the words eis ton Jot- 
danaUj into the Jordan, beyond all contradiction, 
affix to the verb baptize its literal signification/' 
(Bapt. P. 2, p. 132.) 

Bishop Jeremy Taylor, Episcopalian, says : 
"Straightway Jesus went up out of the water 
(saith the Gospel) ; he came up, therefore he went 
down. Behold an immersion, not an aspersion. 
And the ancient churches, followed this of the 
Gospel, did not, in their baptisms, sprinkle water 
with their hands, but immerged the catechnman or 
infant All which are a perfect con- 
viction, that the custom of the ancient churches 
was not sprinkling, but immersion, in pursuance 
of the meaning of the word in the commandment, 
and the example of our blessed Saviour." (Works, 
vol. 14, p. 62.) 

So generally is it understood that Jesus was 
immersed in the Jordan, that thousands of people 
are immersed, or immerse themselves, at the reputed 
place of the baptism of Jesus. In 1890 Dr. Tal- 
mage, a Presbyterian preacher, baptized a man at 
this place. Dean Stanley describes a scene that 
takes place every year in the Jordan. " Of all the 
practices,'^ says Stanley, "superstitions, if we 
choose so to call them, of the Oriental churches 



THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. 61 

in Palestine, none is more innocent or natural than 
the ceremony repeated year by year at the Greek 
Easter — the bathing of the pilgrims in the Jordan. 
It has often been witnessed by European travel- 
lers. I venture to describe it from my own recol- 
lections, for the sake of the general illustration 
which it furnishes of the present forms of Oriental 
Christianity, and also as presenting the nearest 
likeness that can now be seen in the same general 
scenery to the multitudinous baptisms of John. 
Once a year — on the Monday in Passion-week — 
the desolation of the plain of Jericho is broken by 
the descent from the Judean hills of five, six, or 
eight thousand pilgrims. . . . They dismount, 
and set to work to perform their bath ; most on 
the open space, some further up amongst the 
thickets ; some plunging in naked, most, however, 
with white dresses, Vhich they bring with them, 
and which, having been so used, are kept for their 
winding sheets. Most of the bathers keep within 
the shelter of the bank, where the water is about 
four feet deep, though with a bottom of very deep 
mud. ... A primitive domestic character 
pervades in a singular form the whole transaction. 
The families which have come on their single mule 
or' camel, now bathe together, with the utmost 
gravity ; the father receiving from the mother the 



62 IMMERSION. 

infant, which has been brought to receive the one 
immersion which will suffice for the rest of his 
life, and thus, by a curious economy of resources, 
save it from the expense and danger of a future 
pilgrimage in after years. In about two hours the 
shores are cleared; with the same quiet they 
remount their camels and horses ; and before the 
noonday heat has set in, are again encamped on 
the upper plain of Jericho." (Sinai and Pal. p. 
386.) 

There remains but one question. If, as I have 
shown, Jesus was immersed, is it not your duty to 
be baptized also ; and if Jesus went down into the 
water, is it not your duty to do the same ? You 
have no right to set up your opinion against the 
example of the Son of God. " Where he leads I 
will follow," is an excellent rule to obey. 



THE BAPTISM IN MARK. 63 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE BAPTISM MENTIONED IN MARK vii: 1-4. 

rr^HIS scripture reads : " There came together 
-*- unto him the Pharisees, and oertain of the 
scribes, which came from Jerusalem. And when 
they saw some of the disciples eat bread with 
defiled, that is to say, with unwashed hands, 
they found fault. For the Pharisees, and all of 
the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat 
not, holding the tradition of the elders. And 
when they come from the market, except they 
wash, they eat not. And many other things there 
be, which they have received to hold, as the wash- 
ing of cups, and pots, brazen vessels, and of tables." 
There are three things here that demand notice : 
1. The Pharisees were accustomed to wash their 
hands (niptontai) before they eat. They would 
take a basin of water, plunge their hands into it 
and rub them clean. Robinson says in his Greek 
lexicon of this practice, " unless they wash their 
hands (rubbing them) with the fist, i. e., not merely 
dipping the fingers or hands in water as a sign of 
ablution, but rubbing the hands together as a ball 
or fist, in the usual Oriental manner when water is 



64 IMMERSION. 

poured over them ( 2 K., iii: 1), see in nipto, hence 
ad sensum, sedulously, diligently.'^ Perhaps Kitto 
more accurately describes the act (Cy. vol. 1, 
p. 18) : " The hands were plunged in water. It 
was this last, namely the ceremonial ablution, which 
the Pharisees judged to be necessary. When there- 
fore some of that sect remarked that our Lord's 
diciples ate ^with unwashed hands,' it is not to be 
understood literally, that they did not at all wash 
their hands, but that they did not plunge them 
ceremonially according to their own practice." 

This word, however, never refers to the ordi- 
nance of baptism. 

2. When the Pharisees came from the market 
they baptized themselves before they ate. Loud and 
deep has been the denial that baptizo here means 
to dip. But it cannot be asserted that such an 
immersion "is either an impossible or an improb- 
able one; for surely the Jews could have immersed 
themselves after coming from the market ; and 
that they did practice ablution by immersion, in 
many cases besides those precribed by the law of 
Moses, is matter of historical proof. Besides, the 
consistency and harmony of the passage requires 
that baptizo have a more extensive meaning than 
nipto. To read it, " The Pharisees and all the Jews, 
except they wash their hands, eat not ; and when 



THE BAPTISM IN MARK. 65 

they come from the market, except they wash they 
eat not/' makes an unmeaning tautology. It is 
stated in the first place, that they on all occasions 
wash their hands previous to eating; what, then, 
does it add to the sense, to say, that when they 
come from the market, they do not eat without wash- 
ing? The evangelist evidently intends to be un- 
derstood, that all the Jews, on all occasions, wash 
their hands before eating ; and that when they 
have been to the forum, or place of public con- 
course, they practice a more extensive purification. 
Baptizo, then, may not only have its usual signifi- 
cation here, but that meaning is absolutely re- 
quired by the scope and harmony of the passage." 

It is also a fact that rantizontai, sprinkling, is in 
the text of many Greek editions of the New Testa- 
ment. Westcott and Hort has that reading, and 
the Revised version adds, " Some ancient author- 
ities read sprinkle themselves." Such a reading, 
of course, would relieve immersionists of any sup- 
posed difficulty in regard to this text. 

I am, however, content to let the common read- 
ing remain. Thayer, Stephanus, and the Greek 
lexicons generally say that the Pharisees immersed 
or bathed themselves ; while Dr. George Campbell, 
Noyes, and other scholars render the word by im- 
mersion or dip. I will let the scholars testify. 



66 IMMEESION. 

Dr. H. Holtzmann, of Strasburg University, writes 
me, April 4th, 1890, that ^^baptizo means to dip, 
and that washing for ablution could possibly be 
the meaning in Mark vii : 1-4 ; but even there it 
is wrong, since the passage refers to ablution by 
dipping under before meal-time. Moreover, ranti- 
zontaij and not haptizontai^ is the proper reading.^^ 

Dr. George Campbell, Presbyterian, says : " The 
first is niptontaiy properly translated to wash; the 
second is baptizontai, which limits its meaning to a 
particular kind of washing ; for baptizo means to 
plunge, to dip." (Four Gos. vol. 4, p. 205.) 

Olshausen, Lutheran, says : " The term baptizes- 
thai is different from niptestliai ; the former is the 
dipping and rinsing, or cleansing of food that has 
been purchased, to free it from impurities of any 
kind ; niptesthai includes also the act of rubbing 
off." (Com. vol. 1, p. 527.) 

Porf. Plumptre, in Ellicott's Com. vol. 1, p. 207, 
says : " The Greek verb differs from that of the 
previous verse, and implies the washing or immer- 
sion (the verb is that from which our word ^ bap- 
tize^ comes to us) of the whole body, as the former 
does of part. The idea on which the practice rested 
was not one of cleanliness or health, but of arro- 
gant exclusiveness, fastening on the thought of cer-, 
emonial purity. They might have come, in the 



THE BAPTISM IN MARK. 67 

crowd of the market, into passing contact with a 
Gentile, and his touch was as defiling as a corpse. 
So, too, the washing of cups and the like was be- 
cause they might have been touched by a heathen, 
and therefore impure lips." 

The great exegete, Meyer, says : " In this case 
ean ma baptis is not to be understood of washing 
the hands, but of immersion, which the word in 
classic Greek and in the New Testament denotes; 
i. e. in this case, according to the context, to take 
a bath. So, also, Lu. ix : 38 ; Comp. Eccl. xxx : 
25; Judith xii: 7. Having come from market, 
where they may have contracted pollution through 
contact with the crowd, they eat not without hav- 
ing first bathed. The statement proceeds by way 
of climax : Before eating they observe the wash- 
ing of hands always, bat the bathing when they 
come from market and wish to eat." (Com. Mark 
vii: 4.) 

3. The immersion of pots, brazen vessels and 
tables. The main objection offered to this is^ that 
it is not probable that "tables" were immersed. 
Such authorities as Tischendorf, and Westcott and 
Hort, entirely omit tables from the text ; but to be 
absolutely fair, granting that it is a genuine read- 
ing, we are at no loss. It certainly is not impos- 
sible to immerse an Oriental table. Indeed noth- 



GS IMMERSION. 

ing would be easier. " The table in the East," says 
Jahn, " is a piece of round leather, spread upon the 
floor, upon which is placed a sort of stool. This 
supports nothing but a platter." 

But it is objected that this does not mean table, 
but a "couch or bed." But that does not help the 
case of our opponents. The Eastern bed is quite 
as movable as the table. " The manner of sleeping 
in warm Eastern climates," says Kitto, " is neces- 
sarily very different from that which is followed in 
our colder regions. The present usages appear to 
be the same as those of the ancient Jews, and suf- 
ficiently explain the passages of Scripture which 
bear on that subject. Beds of feathers are alto- 
gether unknown, and the Orientals generally lie 
exceedingly hard. Poor people have no certain 
home, and when on a journey, or employed at a 
distance from their dwelling, sleep on mats or 
wrapped in their outer garment, which, from its 
importance in this respect, was forbidden to be re- 
tained in pledge over night. Under peculiar cir- 
cumstances a stone covered with some folded cloth 
or piece of dress is often used for a pillow. The 
more wealthy classes sleep on mattresses stuffed 
with wool or cotton, which often are no other than 
a quilt thickly padded, and are used either singly, 



THE BAPTISM IN MARK. 69 

or one or more placed upon each other." (Cy. vol. 
1, p. 311.) 

The law of Moses positively required many things 
to be put in water. If a dead thing fall upon a per- 
son or thing, it must be put into water. (Lev. xi : 
32.) And other things were to go through ^' the 
water." (Num. xxxi : 23.) Those laws that were 
already stringent were greatly added to by the 
Pharisees. Maimonides, a Jewish commentator, 
states that it was a traditional custom of the Jews 
to immerse all vessels for eating, drinking, and 
cooking, whether had of a Gentile or an Israelite. 
" Vessels," he says, " bought of Gentiles for the 
use of a feast, whether molten or glass vessels, they 
immerse in the waters of the laver, and after that 
they may eat and drink in them ; and such as they 
used for cold things, as cups, pots, and jugs, they 
washed them and immersed them, and they are 
free for use ; and such as they use for hot things, 
as cauldrons and kettles, or brazen vessels, they 
heat them with hot water, and scour them and 
immerse them, and they are fit to be used; and 
things which they use at the fire, as spits and grid- 
irons, they heat them in the fire, and immerse 
them, and they may be lawfully made use of. This 
is the immersion with which they immerse vessels 
for a feast, bought of Gentiles." (Maacolot. c. 17, 



70 IMMERSION. 

sec. 3, 5, 6.) Again the same author says: '^Ves- 
sels, they say, that are furnished in purity, that is, 
by Jews, even though the disciple of a wise man 
makes them, care is to be taken about them ; lo ! 
these ought to be immersed.^' "A bed that is 
wholly defiled if one immerses it part by part.'^ 
(Hilch. Abot. Hatum. c. 12, sec. 6; Hilch. Mik- 
vaot, c. 1, sec. 2.) 

There is nothing in this passage that will make 
an iramersionist change his opinion. 



BAPTISM OF THE THREE THOUSAND. 71 



CHAPTEK IX. 

THE BAPTISM OF THE THREE THOUSAND. 

"TN the second chapter of the Acts of the Apos- 
tles, it is said that after Peter's sermon, " the same 
day there were added about three thousand souls '' 
to the disciples. This statement has been regarded 
by Pedobaptists in general as a very serious objec- 
tion to the act of baptism by immersion. Indeed 
it is their strong fort ; it is the last rallying place. 
To me it is a very weak and childish argument. 
As it appears to have such great force, I will 
notice it at length. 

Take, for example, the standard Methodist 
writer. Dr. T. O. Summers. In his Treatise, p. 86, 
under his " proofs of affusion," he says : " It was 
impossible for the twelve apostles to immerse such 
a multitude in some six or eight hours.'' If Dr. 
Summers had been as good in arithmetic as he was 
in surmising " proofs for affusion," this assertion 
would have never been made. You will notice 
that according to this statement the apostles would 
have baptized less than thirty-one persons each in 
an hour, and nothing would be easier for a Bap- 
tist preacher than that. In this brief sentence there 



72 IMMERSION. 

are some very violent suppositions. I will point 
them out separately. 

1. He presumes that the entire three thousand 
were baptized in one day. The Scripture only says 
they '^ were added." There is no record that they 
were all baptized upon one day; but so far as the 
Bible states, they may have been baptized upon 
the following days. You say that this is a Baptist 
dodge. Not a bit of it. This position is endorsed 
by the strongest scholars. I have before me the 
declaration of Dr. Dollinger, who was the greatest 
Catholic writer of this century. He was the Pro- 
fessor of Church History in the University of 
Bonn, and recently passed to rest full of honors. 
He is surely a disinterested witness. He says in 
his History of the Church, vol. 1, p. 319: ^*It is 
not said that the three thousand converts of Pen- 
tecost were all baptized the same day, but only 
" on that day were added three thousand souls " 
(Acts ii : 41) ; i. e. their conversion and belief 
took place on that day ; they were baptized on the 
following days, of course, gradually, and accord- 
ingly the fact of their baptism is mentioned with- 
out any time being assigned." 

Prof. C. W. Bennett, D.D., says: "No evidence, 
however, is furnished by the record that Peter him- 
self baptized three thousand believers on the day 



BAPTISM OF THE THREE THOUSAND. 73 

of Pentecost. This may have been done by differ- 
ent apostles at different places, by different modes, 
during the entire day, or subsequent days." 
(Arch. p. 396.) 

2. It is a common matter of history that as 
many as three thousand persons have often been 
baptized in one day. I will mention time, place, 
and give the authority upon which I make this 
declaration. 

The first instance is that of Chrysostom, baptiz- 
ing three thousand in Constantinople, on the 16th 
of April, A. D. 404. Perthes, in his Life of St. 
Chrysostom, p. 185, says: "On Easter eve, the 
16th of April, the Church of Chrysostom and the 
friendly clergy met together, as was the custom, to 
spend the night in vigils and to greet the rays of 
the Easter morning. With them were assembled 
three thousand young Christians who were to 
receive baptism.'* Cave, in his Lives of the 
Fathers, London 1716, p. 661, gives an account 
of the baptism of this three thousand, and then 
relates a most horrid story of how the Church was 
desecrated by the soldiers and the entire city scat- 
tered. Chrysostom himself tells us how the act of 
baptism was performed. " For we sink our heads 
in the water," says he, "as if in some grave, the 
old man is buried; and the whole man, having 



74 IMMERSION. 

sunk entirely down, is concealed. Then, we 
emerge him, the new man rises again. For as 
it is easy for us to be immersed and to emerge, so 
it is easy for God to bury the old man and to bring 
to light the new. This is done three times.^^ 
(Patrol. Lat. Minge, vol. 59, p. 151.) If Chrysos- 
tom could immerse three thousand converts in one 
night when the soldiers threatened his life and 
drove him from his church, it would seem an easy 
thing for Peter to immerse a like number when he 
had favor with all the people, as he did have on 
the day of Pentecost. 

The second instance is that of St. Patrick, of 
Ireland. During his life he is said to have 
immersed one hundred and twenty thousand peo- 
ple. Dr. Todd, an Episcopalian, Professor of 
Hebrew in Trinity College, Dublin, and a ripe 
Irish scholar, says in his life of Patrick, p. 442 : 
"Patrick entered into the king's palace, and he 
said to Hercus, (after some conversation) wilt 
thou receive the baptism of the Lord, which I 
have with me ? He answered, I will receive 
it; and they came to the fountain Loigles, and 
when he had opened his book and had baptized 
the man Hercus, he heard men behind his back 
mocking him one to another about the matter, for 
they knew not what he had done. And he bap- 



BAPTISM OF THE THREE THOUSAND. 75 

tized many thousand on that day." On p. 449, 
Dr. Todd says : " He penetrated the hearts of all 
and led them to embrace cordially the Christian 
faith and doctrine. The seven sons of Amal- 
gaidh, with the king himself and twelve thousand 
men were baptized. They were baptized in a 
well (fountain) called Tobur-en-adare." Rev. J. 
OTarrell, in his popular Life of St. Patrick, p. 
157, says: "After descending from the mountain, 
invigorated for the sacred duties of the ministry, 
St. Patrick came to the district of Corcothemne — 
not far distant, it would seem — and to the fountain 
of Sinn, where he baptized many thousands." In 
these lives of St. Patrick there are repeated men- 
tion of fountain baptisms which of necessity were 
by immersion. Indeed, so late as the twelfth 
century, Gilbert, Bishop of Limerick, in Ireland, 
in his little book. The Constitution of the Church, 
says of the priest : " It is his duty to administer 
baptism, to dip believers who have been exorcised 
and who have confessed the Holy Trinity, with 
three immersions in the sacred font." (Patrol. 
Lat. vol. 159, p. 1000.) Here are twelve thousand 
men immersed in one day, and several thousands 
on other days. 

The third instance which I present is that of 
Clovis, king of France. He was baptized in 



76 IMMERSION. 

Rheims by Remingius, on Christmas day, A. D. 496. 
Thanks to that magnificent collection of the Chris- 
tian Fathers — Patrologia Latince — I have all the 
original documents before me. Hincmar, the suc- 
cessor of Remingius, says, that not only was the 
king baptized, but ^^from his army three thousand 
men were baptized, without counting women and 
children." (Patrol. Lat. vol. 125, pp. 1159, 1162.) 
Gregory of Tours, who wrote a valuable history of 
France, in 574, says, they were baptized " in a fresh 
fountain," and gives the details of the immersion. 
Avitus, Bishop of Vienna, was so pleased that he 
wrote the king a letter in which he says : " That 
it might appear in due order that you were born 
again out of the water for salvation on that day on 
which the world received the Lord of Heaven, 
born for its redemption.'^ (Patrol. Lat., vol. 71, 
p. 1154.) Alcuin also says of his baptism: "He 
(Remingius) led the eager king to the fountain of 
life, and when he came he washed him in the 
fountain of eternal salvation. So the king was 
baptized with his nobles and people, who rejoiced 
to receive the sacrament of the healing bath, divine 
grace having been previously given them." (Patrol, 
Lat., vol. 101, p. 670.) If there can be any sort 
of doubt as to what Alcuin meant by washing him 
in a fountain, he says elsewhere that baptism was 



BAPTISM OF THE THREE THOUSAND. 77 

by "trine immersion. '^ (Patrol. Lat., vol. 100, p. 
291.) The testimony of Hincmar will set the mat- 
ter at rest. He says : "After confessing the ortho- 
dox faith in answer to questions put by the holy 
pontiff, according to ecclesiastical custom he was 
baptized by trine immersion in the name of the 
holy and undivided Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit.^' (Patrol. Lat., vol. 125, p. 1162.) This 
immersion can not be called in question. 

The fourth instance I present is that of Au- 
gustine. He baptized 10,000 men, not counting 
women and children, in the Swale, in one day. 
In Fabyan's Chronicles, London 1811, p. 96, I 
read ; " He had in one day christened ten thousands 
of Saxons or Angles in the west river, which is 
called Swale, beside York." Henry, in his History 
of England, confirms this statement. (Vol. 3., p. 
192.) I have before me a letter of Pope Gregory 
to Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria, informing 
him of this great victory. " More than ten thou- 
sand English," says he, " they tell us, were baptized 
by the same brother, our fellow bishop, which I 
communicate to you to announce to the people of 
Alexandria, and that you may do something in 
prayer for the dwellers at the ends of the earth." 
(Patrol. Lat., vol. 77, p. 951.) Gregory evidently 
understood this to mean an immersion, for he said : 



78 IMMERSION. 

"We baptize by trine immersion." (Patrol. Lat., 
vol. 77, p. 498. Gocelyn, in his Life of Augustine, 
has this to say : ^^ He secured on all sides large 
numbers for .Christ, so that on the birth-day of the 
Lord, celebrated by the melodious anthems of all 
heaven, more than ten thousand of the English 
were born again in the laver of holy baptism, with 
an infinite number of women and children, in 
a river which the English call Sirarios, the 
Swale, as if at one birth of the church from the 
womb. These persons, at the command of the 
divine teacher, as if he were an angel from heaven, 
calling upon them, all entered the dangerous 
depths of the river, two and two together, as if it 
had been a solid plain ; and in true faith, confess- 
ing the exalted Trinity, they were baptized one by 
the other in turns, the apostolic leader blessing the 
water. ... So great a prodigy from heaven 
born out of the deep whirlpool." (Patrol. Lat., 
vol. 80, p. 79.) Here are more than three times 
the number of Pentecost, not counting women and 
children. 

I would also call attention to the baptism of 
Paulinus of ten thousand English in the river 
Swale. I quote from the learned Camden, in his 
Britannia, London 1806, vol. 3, p. 257, the Swale 
'^was accounted sacred by the ancient Saxons, above 



BAPTISM OF THE THREE THOUSAND. 79 

the ten thousand persons, besides women and 
children, having received baptism in it, in one day 
from Paulinus, Archbishop of York, on the first 
conversion of the Saxons to Christianity.'^ 

If there still lingers a doubt as to these river 
baptisms of Augustine and Paulinus, I would refer 
you to the Roman Catholic historian of the early 
English Church, John Lingard, D.D., vol. 1, p. 291 : 
" The regular manner of administering baptism 
was by immersion.^' 

The sixth instance took place in Germany. St. 
Boniface is said to have immersed 100,000 conv^erts 
during his life. Othelon, in his Life of Boniface, 
gives an account of a large number who were bap- 
tized at one time by him. " Then also he entered," 
says he, "other parts of Germany that he might 
preach. He went to the Hessians located on the 
confines of the Saxons, whom in like manner, he 
converted in large numbers from paganism, and he 
washed many thousands of men in the sacrament 
of baptism.'' (St. Boniface Mogunt Arch, vita c. 
12 srpt., Eccl. viii. saec. Migne.) Pope Zacharias 
in a letter to Boniface fully explains what is meant 
by this *' washing." " Whosoever has been washed," 
says the Pope, "without the invocation of the 
Trinity, has not the sacrament of regeneration (bap- 
tism), as it is assuredly true that if any one has 



80 IMMERSION. 

been immersed in the baptismal fountain without 
the invocation of the Trinity, he has not been made 
perfect until he shall have been baptized in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Spirit. . . . Whosoever is immersed, the 
Trinity being invoked in Gospel language after 
the rule laid down by the Lord, in the name of 
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, 
has that sacrament without doubt. . . . But 
about those who immerse in the fountain of bap- 
tism without the invocation of the Trinity, it is 
known to thy fraternity that the series of sacred 
rules contain something which we advise you to 
hold tenaciously.^^ (Zach. Pop., pp. 943, 994, 
Migne.) 

The seventh instance is found in Pomerania. 
Bishop Otto, 1124, preached on a missionary tour 
in that country. An account of this is given in 
Neander^s Church History, vol. 4, p. 8. "Seven 
days," says the historian, "were spent by the bishop 
in giving instruction; three days were appointed 
for spiritual and bodily preparation to receive the 
ordinance of baptism. They held a fast and bathed 
themselves, that they might with cleanliness and 
decency submit to the holy transaction. Large 
vessels filled with water were sunk into the ground 
r^nd surrounded with curtains. Behind these bap- 



BAPTISM OF THE THREE THOUSAND. 81 

tism was administered, in the form customary at 
that period, by immersion. During the twenty 
days residence in that town, some thousands were 
baptized ; and the persons baptized were instructed 
on the matters contained in the confession of faith 
and respecting the most important acts of wor- 
ship." 

The eighth example is the introduction of Christi- 
anity into Russia. The Russian ruler, Vladimir, 
accepted Christ, and after his baptism he com- 
manded all the people of Kieif to be baptized. 
Accordingly on a set day thousands of the people 
of this city were immersed in the river. Dean 
Stanley gives the following account of this trans- 
action : Vladimir " was baptized accordingly at 
Cherson, and then issued orders for a great baptism 
of his people at Kieff. . . . The whole people 
of Kieff were immersed in the same river, some 
sitting on the banks, some plunged in, others 
swimming, whilst the priest read the prayers. It 
was a sight, says Nestor, wonderfully curious 
and beautiful to see; and when the whole people 
were baptized, each one returned to his own house." 
The spot was consecrated by the first Christian 
church, and Kieff, which had already, which we 
have seen from old traditions, been the Glaston- 



82 IMMERSION. 

bury, became henceforward the Canterbury of the 
Eussian Empire/^ (East. Ch., p. 291.) 

The last instance records the wonderful success 
of one of our devoted missionaries. In the Madras 
Confederacy, in 1878, Bro. J. E. Clough, with five 
assistants, baptized in six hours, two baptizing at 
a time, 2,222 converts. On December 28th, 1890^ 
1,671 more were baptized. As these baptisms were 
pel-formed by Baptist preachers I will scarcely be 
expected to offer proof that the act was by im- 
mersion. 

The truth is that all the great baptisms of the 
world have been by immersion. 

Here are nine examples where thousands were 
baptized by immersion in one day. These facts 
will not only answer any quibble that may be 
offered upon the "baptism of the three thousand,'' 
but demonstrates that immersion was possible and 
probable. 



BAPTISM OF THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH. 83 



CHAPTER X. 

THiJ BAPTISM OF THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH. 

A CTS viii : 38, 39 : " They went down both into 
-^-^ the w^ater, both Philip and the eunuch, and 
he baptized him. And when they came up out of the 
water the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip/^ 

This example is overwhelmingly in favor of im- 
mersion. The force of the preposition in this nar- 
rative can not be overstated. They went down into 
the water, and came up out of the water. There is 
not a child ten years old that does not know what 
is meant here, and exactly what took place. It 
takes a wise man to explain away this passage; 
and when he gets through explaining, immersion 
is there still. 

They went into the water, and came up out of 
the water. It does not say they went to the pool's 
brink, but they went into the water, and they came 
out of the water. I have an idea that when God 
says they went into the water, that is exactly what 
happened. I will illustrate by rather an amusing 
incident : There was in this State an old Baptist 
preacher full of wit. He heard a man preach, who 
was not a Baptist, and he took great pains to show 



84 IMMERSION. 

that *' into " in this scripture meant near by, at, in 
the neighborhood of. The next day the old man 
saw this preacher walking in front of a saloon. He 
said nothing, but walked up the street till he met 
one of his prominent members, and told him he 
saw his preacher down the street in a saloon. The 
preacher immediately denied this statement as a 
foul slander, and tried to make the old man take 
it back. " I was not in the saloon," said he ; "I 
only passed by it." "But," said the old man, 
" ^ into,^ yesterday, meant near by, in the neighbor- 
hood of, and I thought it meant the same thing to- 
day. It means one thing in a sermon, and another 
thing in every-day life." No, sir ; they both went 
down into the water, and Philip immersed the eu- 
nuch. 

The best Pedobaptist authorities agree with us 
fully on this position. 

John Calvin, Presbyterian, says : " Here we per- 
ceive how baptism was administered among the an- 
cients, for they immersed the whole body in water." 

Dr. Doddridge says : " It would be very irrational 
to suppose that they went down to the water merely 
that Philip might take up a little water in his hand 
to pour on the eunuch. A person of his dignity 
had, no doubt, many vessels in his baggage on such 
a journey through so desert a country — a precau- 



BAPTISM OF THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH. 85 

tion absolutely necessary for travelers in those parts, 
and never omitted by them." (Vol. 3, p. 119.) 

Bishop Ellicott in his Commentary says : " The 
Greek preposition might mean simply ^unto^ the 
water, but the universality of immersion in the 
practice of the early church supports the English 
version. The eunuch would lay aside his garments, 
descend chest deep into the water, and be plunged 
under it ' in the name of the Lord Jesus ' — the only 
formula recognized in the Acts-^' (Com. vol. 2, p. 
54.) 

Homersham Cox in his recent researches declares : 
" This (immersion) was clearly the mode of baptiz- 
ing the Ethiopian eunuch : ^ They both went down 
into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he 
baptized him.' " (The First Cen. of Christ, p. 277.) 

The scholars teach that this passage means im- 
mersion. 

But this objection is urged. Philip read to the 
eunuch the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and in the 
fifteenth verse of the preceding chapter occurs the 
})hrase, " so shall he sprinkle many nations." It 
is taken for granted that this "sprinkling" means 
baptism. There is no mention made of water and 
none of baptism in this scripture. " So " in this 
verse must refer to "as" in verse 14 to complete 
the antithesis. The one is commensurate with the 



86 IMMERSION. 

other. In verse 14 he is telling how Jesus shall 
astonish the nations by his great sufferings; and 
this verse must correspond with the other. If this 
is the case, baptism is not the question discussed, 
but the sufferings of the Son of God. The word 
sprinkle then would refer to the expiation Christ 
has made for our sins. This is often so expressed 
in the Scriptures, as in Heb. x : 22 : " Let us draw 
near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, 
having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, 
and our bodies washed with pure water.'' 

This passage can not refer to baptism because 
the word sprinkle is used. Sprinkle is never used 
for baptism in the Bible. Baptizo, and that alone, 
is the word that describes the ordinance of bap- 
tism. This all scholars admit. Furthermore, it 
sJays he shall sprinkle many nations. Baptism has 
nothing to do with nations; it is a personal mat- 
ter; something that each man must perform for 
himself. The commission is, "He that believeth 
and is baptized shall be saved." The New Testa- 
ment always places it in this light, and in none 
other. 

The best scholars say that the word nazah, here 
rendered to sprinkle, means to astonish. Gesenius 
defines nazah, "to leap, to spring, to exult, to leap 
for joy ; when applied to liquids, to spirt, to spat- 



BAPTISM OF THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH. 87 

ter, to besprinkle/^ (Lex. p. 658.) But this pas- 
sage does not refer to liquids; it refers to nations. 
But admitting that the word means to sprinkle, we 
have not one particle of proof that the passage has 
the most distant application to baptism. 

George R. Noyes, Professor of Hebrew in Har- 
vard University, in his New Translation of the 
Hebrew Prophets, 1833, renders Isaiah lii; 14, 
15, thus; 

"As many were amazed at the sight of him, 
So disfigured and scarcely human was his visage, 
And his form so unlike that of man, 
So shall many nations exult oh account of him, 
And kings shall shut their mouths before him ; 
For what had never been told them shall they see, 
And what they never heard shall they perceive." 

Dr. Barnes, the eminent Presbyterian scholar, 
after fully discussing the various meanings of the 
word, says : " It may be remarked that whichever 
of the above senses may be assigned, it furnishes 
no argument for the practice of sprinkling in bap- 
tism. It refers to the fact of his purifying or cleans- 
ing the nations, and not to the ordinance of Chris- 
tian baptism ; nor should it be used as an argument 
in reference to the mode in which that should be 
administered.'' 

But this is not all. Two hundred and eighty-five 
years before Christ the Old Testament was trans- 



88 IMMERSION. 

lated into Greek. This was done by seventy-two 
learned men appointed for the purpose. Those 
rabbis understood the Hebrew perfectly well, and 
they translated this word nazah by the Greek word 
thcmmazOy to astonish, a word which never means 
to sprinkle. To show how authoritative this trans- 
lation is, it is only necessary to state that our Sav- 
iour and his apostles used it nearly altogether. 

From whatever standpoint we look at this pas- 
sage it can mean nothing but immersion. 



89 



CHAPTER XI. 

PAUL'S BAPTISM. 

TDEDOBAPTISTS say more of Paul's baptism 
than of any other in the New Testament; 
yet, when rightly considered, it affords them no 
argument whatever. This Scripture reads as fol- 
lows : — 

" And why tarriest thou ? arise, and be baptized, 
and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of 
the Lord." (Acts xxii : 16.) 

I will examine some points in this Scripture. 

It must be remembered that this is the proof 
text of the Pedobaptists, and if I answer all 
objections, and show that this passage is not incon- 
sistent with, and is even favorable to immersion, I 
have accomplished all that is necessary to my 
argument. 

" Arise." They make great capital out of this 
word. " Paul," say they, " simply got up and was 
baptized where he stood." Does anastas, the 
Greek word for arise, mean a standing still? It 
does not. The man may or may not stand still. 
Liddell and Scott not only say it means to " arise," 
but to make *' people arise to leave their homes." 



90 IMMERSION. 

And Thayer says, " those who leave a place to go 
elsewhere ; hence, of those who prepare themselves 
for a journey.^' Robinson, "He arose and fol- 
lowed." According to the Lexicons Paul arose 
and went to another place and was baptized. May 
I suggest one of the "rivers of Damascus?" 
(2 Kings v: 12.) 

Do the instances where anastas occur, imply a 
standing still after the person has arisen ? Homer 
relates that Ulysses came in with a stag on his 
shoulders, threw it down and said to his com- 
panions, " arise and eat." Yet the stag had to be 
prepared and cooked before they ate, and parts of 
it were eaten in another place. This participle is 
used several times in the ninth chapter of the 
Acts, where the baptism of Paul is mentioned, 
and always with the idea of motion. Verse 11th: 
"arise, and go into the street that is called 
Straight;" v. 18th, "he arose and was bap- 
tized ; " vs. 34th, " Eneas, Jesus Christ maketh 
thee whole; arise, and make thy bed." Actsx: 
13, "Arise, Peter, slay and eat;" v. 20th, "arise 
thee, therefore, and get thee down." Every one 
of these examples shows that the persons did not 
stand still. I have not found a single example 
where anastas does not imply motion. 

"Be Baptized." If there was no other word in 



91 

this entire sentence this would be sufficient to tell 
what was meant. As Connybeare and Howson 
say: ''He w^as baptized, and the rivers of 
Damascus became more to him than all the 
waters of Judah." (Life and Epis. p. 89.) Or 
as Bishop Ellicott says in his Commentary : '' The 
baptism would probably be administered in one or 
the other of the rivers which the history of Naa- 
man had made famous, and so the waters of Abana 
and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, were now sanc- 
tified no less than the Jordan for the '' mystical 
"washing away of sin." But Paul himself tells 
how he was baptized : " We are buried with him 
by baptism into death." (Rom. vi : 3.) The " we" 
includes himself along with the E-omans. This is 
a clear case of immersion. 

"Wash away thy sins." The word used for 
Wash is louoj in the middle voice. There are 
words to express the washing of the several parts 
of the body ; but louo means the washing or bath- 
ing of the entire body. In the active voice it 
means to wash, to bathe ; and in the middle voice 
a washing by bathing. As a learned and candid 
writer has said that if the word baptize was doubt- 
ful, the use of louo would settle Paul's baptism. 
Here is what the Lexicons say. Dr. Robinson : 
Louo " signifies to wash the entire body, not 



92 IMMERSION. 

merely a pari of it, like nipto.^' Trench : ^'Nip- 
tein and nipsasthai almost always express the 
washing of a part of the body ; while louein, which 
is not so much ' to wash 'as Ho bathe/ and 
lousthaif or in common Greek louesthai, to ' bathe 
one's self/ imply always not the bathing of a, 
part of the body, but of the whole." Liddell 
and Scott : " Wash the body, to wash one's self,, 
to bathe." Thayer says, " louo refers to the whole 
of the body, nipto to a part." 

Louo was plainly used in this signification 
among the Greeks. Homer represents a star just 
rising fresh from ocean's bath. He also says of 
some of the companions of Telemachus : — 

"Thence to the bath, a beauteous pile, descend." 

Jupiter gives direction to Apollo to cleanse the 
body of Sarpedon, and then bathe it in the 
river. 

' * Phoebus, my son, delay not from beneath 
Yon hill of weapons drawn, cleanse from his blood 
Sarpedon's corse ; then, bearing him remote, 
Lave him in waters of the running stream." 

In the Bible it is used ; 1. As synonymous with 
baptize. (2 Kings v : 10, 14.) Elisha told Naaman 
to go and wash, and he went and dipped himself 
in the Jordan. 2. It is used for baptize in Heb* 
X : 22 : '^ Having your bodies washed or bathed 



93 



in pure water.'' Here the entire body is to be ' 
washed. This washing was, therefore, equal to an 
immersion. I can not refrain from referring to 
two poets who have spoken of the washing of our 
bodies as emblematic of the washing away of 
sin. Milton says : 

"Them who shall believe 
Baptized in the profluent stream, the sign 
Of washing them from the guilt of sin to life 
Pure, and in him prepared, if so befall. 
For death, like that which the Redeemer died." 

Cowper said: 

" There is a fountain filled with blood, 
Drawn from Immanuel's veins, 
And sinners plunged beneath that flood 
Lose all their guilty stains." 

I would therefore record it as my earnest con- 
viction that this passage teaches immersion. 



94 IMMERSION. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE BAPTISM OF THE JAILER. 

rriHE baptism of the jailer appears to give some 
of our Pedobaptist brethren a good deal of 
comfort. Thus Dr. Summers states the case from 
the Methodist standpoint : " The Philippian jailer 
too must have been baptized by affusion. Ilis 
conversion took place in the prison — at midnight — 
and he and all his were baptized straightway. We 
are sure that Paul and Silas did not take them 
down to the river — especially at that unseemly 
hour — and plunge them into it; for the noble- 
minded prisoners would not leave the precincts of 
the jail until they were taken out, in daylight, by 
proper authority. And it is equally gratuitous and 
absurd to say there was a bath or tank in the prison, 
in which the jailer and his family were immersed. 
A small portion of the water which he brought 
into the prison to wash the apostle's 'stripes,' was 
sufficient for his baptism, as, like all the other 
cases of baptism of which any particulars are given 
in the New Testament, it was administered by 
pouring or aspersion.'' (Summers on Bap., p. 87.) 
There is one serious objection to this statement 



BAPTISM OF THE JAILER. 95 

of the case by Dr. Summers. He and the Scrip- 
tures do not agree. I prefer to follow the Word 
of God. Dr. Summers assumes that the conversion 
takes place in the jail, that they were baptized in 
the jail, that a small portion of the water that was 
brought into the jail to wash the stripes was used 
for baptizing. That is a very pretty theory if it 
were true. The Bible reads another way. Here is 
the way it is recorded in Acts xvi: 27-34 : "And 
the keeper of the prison awaking out of his sleep, 
and seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his 
sword, and would have killed himself, supposing 
that the prisoners had been fled. But Paul cried 
with a loud voice, saying, * Do thyself no harm; 
for we are all here.' Then he called for a light, 
and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down 
before Paul and Silas, and brought them out, and 
said, ' Sirs, what must I do to be saved ? ' And 
they said, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
thou shalt be saved, and thy house.' And they 
spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all 
that were in his house (not in the prison). And he 
took them the same hour of the night, and washed 
their stripes ; and was baptized, he and all of his, 
straightway. And when he had brought them into 
his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, 
believing in God with all his house." 



96 IMMERSION. 

Nothing is more evident than that the conversion 
did not take place in the prison, and that the bap- 
tism did not take place in either the house or the 
prison. The Scriptures say this so plainly that 
there can be no doubt as to the facts in the case. 
The harmony between our Methodist brother here 
and the Scriptures is not apparent. 

Why was it a thing incredible that Paul and 
Silas carried this family down " to the river side/' 
and immersed them in the river Styrmon, which 
ran hard by the city? I see nothing impossible 
or absurd in this. The absurdity rests with the 
man who does not wish to obey the commandments 
of our God. The river was there, and if a river is 
not good for baptismal purposes what is it good 
for? 

There is no doubt that near the house of the 
jailer there was a suitable place for immersion. 
Those who know any thing about Eastern houses 
will have no room to doubt this. Dr. Hibbard, the 
great Methodist writer on baptism, says, bathing 
was a custom " indispensable to pleasure, to decency 
and to health." (Bap., p. 152.) And if this is a 
fact, is it not likely that the jailer would have had 
such a place convenient ? In this connection the 
two Episcopalian scholars, Conybeare and Howson, 
say : " In the same hour of the night the jailer took 



BAPTISM OF THE JAILER. 97 

the Apostles to the well or fountain of water which 
was within or near the precincts of the prison, and 
there he washed their wounds, and there he and 
his household were baptized. He did what he 
could to assuage the bodily pain of Paul and Silas, 
and they admitted him and his, by the laver of 
regeneration, to the spiritual citizenship of the 
kingdom of God. The prisoners of the jailer had 
now become his guests." ( Life and Epis., p. 267.) 

The Scriptures were plain enough that they were 
not baptized in the jail, but what was to hinder 
there being a bath in the jail? One of the fore- 
most Pedobaptist scholars in the world has lately 
made the statement that there was probably a bath 
in the prison. Prof. Plumtre, in Bishop Ellicott's 
Commentary, says: "A public prison was likely 
enough to contain a bath or pool of some kind, 
where the former (immersion) would be feasible." 
(Ellicott, Com., vol. 2, p. 109.) I can afford to risk 
such scholars as Bishop Ellicott and Prof. Plumtre. 

I will use an ad hominem argument. Our Meth- 
odist and Presbyterian brethren have fully illus- 
trated, in the last few years, the meaning of this 
scripture. They have repeatedly done the ver}' 
thing they said could not be done. There are fre- 
quent instances where Pedobaptist ministers have 
immersed persons in jail. What I want to know 



98 IMMERSION. 

is this ; When was the truth told ; when they de- 
clared that this thing was absurd and impossible^ 
or when they were immersing persons in the jail 
after the manner of Paul and and Silas ? 

I give some examples. Rev. T. T. Eaton, D.D.,, 
LL.D., of Louisville, Ky., writes me as follows: 

Gloucester, Mass., Aug. 7th, 1890. 

Dear Bro. Christian: 

Your letter was forwarded to me here. The case 
of Shade Westmoreland is well known in Chatta- 
nooga. I think it was in the spring of 1874 that 
he was executed. The facts are that he lay in jail 
in Chattanooga, charged with murder, for fully a 
year. Once he took an appeal to the supreme court, 
and they remanded the case to the court below on 
some point. The court failed to hold a session once 
on account of the cholera's raging in Chattanooga^ 
That was the summer and fall of 1873. I visited 
him in jail several times, and talked and prayed 
with him. At the date of execution I was called 
to be absent at Hopkinsville, Ky. I bade him 
good-by, and he expressed regret that I could not 
" attend to him " at his execution. I told him that, 
any of the ministers would readily be with him, 
and named Revs. Bachman and Bays. On the 
morning of the execution they were at the jail,. 



BAPTISM OF THE JAILER. 99 

He asked to be baptized. They were ready to use 
a pitcher, but he demanded immersion. The jailer 
was unwilling that he (W.) should be taken to the 
river, and so Fletcher Eogers soon had a big bath- 
tub in the jail, and the Revs. J. W. Bachman (Pas- 
tor of the Presbyterian Church) and W. W. Bays 
(Pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church South) 
did immerse Shade Westmoreland in the tub in 
the jail. Bro. Bachman said to me afterwards : " I 
thought we were giving you an argument when we 
were doing that." I do not recall the exact date, 
though that could readily be ascertained from the 
court records. Hoping this is satisfactory, I am 
Yours fraternally, T. T. Eaton. 

Rev. A. J. Kincaid, of Fort Smith, Ark., writes : 
Fort Smith, Ark., July 30th, 1890. 
Eld. J. T. Christian, Jackson, Miss,: 

Dear Brother, — Just about one year ago now, 
Rev. J. L. Massey, of the M. E. Church of this 
city, preached a rousing sermon (so he thought) on 
baptism, in which he seemed to try to annihilate 
immersion and all who practice it. 

In the course of his sermon he said that he had 
had to perform that indecent act, but that he hoped 
to God that he would never have it to do again. 
Through with his tirade on baptism, he came down 



100 IMMERSION. 

from his pulpit and offered an opportunity for 
church-membership, when a lady came to join his 
church. He received her, and reached for a glass 
of water, when the lady said to him : " Oh, no, Mr. 
Massey, that won't do me ; you must immerse me." 
So he had to take her to the Campbellite Church, 
or to the river — I am not certain which — and im- 
merse her. I think he went with her to the Camp- 
bellite Church. 

That same week there were several men in the 
U. S. prison here who were to be hanged. One of 
them sent for Mr. Massey, and he went to see him 
and had some religious service with him, and the 
prisoner professed faith, and wanted to be baptized. 
The Rev. gentleman called for a c^p of water. The 
prisoner objected, and said that would not do him ; 
that he must put him under the water. In the rear 
of the prison are some large troughs of water, 
where he took him and immersed him. It was done 
in the prison. They have arrangements in the 
prison yard for the same thing. Indeed it frequent- 
ly occurs here. 

I did not see these things with my own eyes, 
but I have them from those who did. 

Fraternally, A. J. Kincaid. 

Eev. J. S. Dill, of Goldsboro, N. C, writes : 



BAPTISM OF THE JAILER. 101 

GoLDSBORO, N. C, Nov. 1st, 1890. 
J. T. Christian, D. D. : 

My Dear Bro., — In reply to your inquiry about 
the jail baptism in Goldsboro I cheerfully certify 
to the following : One Bud Anderson, having been 
condemned to be hung for murder, made a profes- 
sion of faith, and was, in the county jail at Golds- 
boro, immersed by a Free-will Baptist preacher. 
The immersion was conveniently performed in a 
large bath-tub. I visited Mr. Anderson several 
times, and received from him an account of his 
baptism. I think the baptism was witnessed by 
W. R. Parker, then deputy sheriff, and for many 
years a member of the Missionary Baptist Church. 
The event occurred in the year 1889. 

Fraternally, J. S. Dill, 

Pastor Baptist Church, 



h*>iiil'-'^vt^:t^f/yf 



102 IMMERSON. 



CHAPTEK XIII. 

THE ARGUMENT FROM ROM. VI: 4. 

" |X NOW ye not, that so many of us as were 
baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized 
into his death? Therefore we are buried with 
him by baptism into death : that like as Christ was 
raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, 
even so we also should walk in the newness of 
life." (Rom. vi: 3, 4. Also Comp. Col. ii: 12.) 
There is no more pointed passage in the word 
of God. This Scripture unquestionably teaches 
immersion. There is no sort of doubt about it. 
There is no explanation that could make this 
passage mean any thing else. It directly refers 
to the resurrection of Jesus from the grave. As 
he was buried in the grave so we are buried in 
the water, and as he arose from the grave so we 
arise from the watery grave where we have been 
laid. Our baptism thus becomes a pledge of our 
future burial and resurrection. It contains in sym- 
bol the whole of the Gospel of Christ. Sprinkling 
and pouring can in no wise symbolize a burial 
and resurrection. A "drop of water is not as 
rrood as an ocean" in this instance. Some of 



ARGUMENT FROM ROM. VI. 103 

our Pedobaptist brethren try to argue that this 
refers to a spiritual baptism, and that therefore it 
does not refer to immersion. I could grant most 
readily that this passage had reference to a spirit- 
ual baptism, and still hold with every degree of 
reason that it refers to immersion. The spiritual 
baptism would have an outward symbol or sign, 
and nothing would more fitly represent this than 
an immersion in water. This, however, is a mere 
begging of the question. The scholarship of the 
world is unanimously opposed to this idea and in 
favor of a literal baptism. I scarcely know an 
authority that does not take this view of the sub- 
ject. The fact is, the scholarship of the world has 
put this Scripture beyond dispute. This is the 
one of the few passages that practically all com- 
mentators agree as teaching the same thing. I 
shall give a few of the hundreds of scholars who 
have written upon this subject. You will see that 
they reflect the sentiments of all denominations : 

Canon Liddon, Episcopalian, on Easter Sunday, 
1889, preached a sermon upon ^^ The Likeness of 
Christ's Resurrection." After showing that Jesus 
Christ really died upon the cross, the Canon 
pointed out that according to PauFs teaching the 
convert to Christianity should really die to sin. 
*' Of this,'' he proceeded, ^' the apostle traced the 



104 IMMERSION. 

token in the ceremony, at that time universal, of 
baptism by immersion. As Jesus, crucified and 
dead, was laid in the grave by Joseph of Arima- 
thea, so the Christian, crucified to the world 
through the body of Christ descends, as into the 
tomb, into the baptismal waters. He was buried 
beneath them ; they closed for a moment over him ; 
he was ' planted,' Paul would have said, not only 
in the likeness of Christ's death, but of his buriaL 
But the immersion is over; the Christian is lifted 
from the flood, and this evidently corresponded to 
the resurrection of Christ as the descent had been 
to his burial. 'Buried with him in baptism 
wherein ye are also risen with him.' " 

John Wesley, Methodist, says : '^ We are buried 
with him — alluding to the ancient manner of bap- 
tizing by immersion." 

Dr. Chalmers, Presbyterian, says: ''The orig- 
inal meaning of the word baptism is immersion; 
and though we regard it as a point of indifferency 
whether the ordinance so named be performed in , 
this way or by sprinkling, yet we doubt not that the 
prevalent style of administration in the apostle's 
days, was by an actual submerging of the body under 
water. We advert to this, for the purpose of throw- 
ing light on the analogy that is instituted in these 
verses. Jesus Christ, by death, underwent this 



ARGUMENT FROM ROM. VI. 105 

sort of baptism — even immersion under the surface 
of the ground, whence he soon emerged again 
by his resurrection. We, by being baptized into 
his death, are conceived to have made a similar 
translation. '^ 

Est, Chancellor of the celebrated Catholic Uni- 
versity of Douay, says : " For immersion represents 
to us Christ's burial, and so also his death. For 
the tomb is a symbol of death, since none but the 
dead are buried. Moreover, the emersion, which 
follows the immersion, has a resemblance to the 
resurrection. We are therefore in baptism con- 
formed not only to the death of Christ, as he has 
just said, but also to his burial and resurrection." 

Meyer, the great German scholar, says : " The 
recipient of baptism, who by his baptism enters 
into the fellowship of death with Christ, is neces- 
sarily also in the act of baptism ethically buried 
with him, because after baptism he is spiritually 
risen with him. In reality this burial with him 
is not a moral fact distinct from the having died 
with him, as actual burial is distinct from actual 
dying ; but it sets forth the fullness and complete- 
ness of the relation, of which the recipient, in ac- 
cordance with the form of baptism, so far as the 
latter takes place through the katadusin and ana- 
dusiriy becomes conscious successively. The recip- 



106 IMMERSION. 

lent — thus had Paul figuratively represented the 
process — is conscious, (a) in the baptism gener- 
ally : now I am entered into the fellowship with 
the death of Christ; (6) in the immersion in jpai'- 
ticular : now I am becoming buried with Christ ; 
(c) and then in the emergence: now I rise to the 
new life with Christ.'^ 

Charles W. Bennett, edited by Bishop John F. 
Hurst and George R. Crooks, Methodist, says in 
his new Archaeology : " The terms of scripture de- 
scribing the rite, most of the figures used by the 
writers of the New Testament to indicate its sig- 
nificance — Rom. vi: 4; Col. ii: 12, etc. — the ex- 
planations of the Apostolic Constitutions, the com- 
ments of the foremost Christian fathers for the first 
six centuries, and the express instructions of eccle- 
siastical councils, indicate that immersion was the 
more usual mode of baptism.'' 

Adam Clarke, Methodist, says : " It is probable 
that the Apostle here alludes to the mode of ad- 
ministering baptism by immersion, the whole body 
being put under water, which seems to say, the 
man is drowned, is dead; and when he came up 
out of the water, he seemed to have a resurrection 
to life, the man is risen again, he is alive.'' 

Albert Barnes, Presbyterian, states : " It is alto- 



ARGUMENT FEOM ROM. VI. 107 

gether probable that the Apostle in this place had 
allusion to the custom of baptizing by immersion.^' 

Conybeare and Howson, Episcopalians, say : " This 
passage can not be understood unless it be borne in 
mind that the primitive baptism was by immersion.'' 
(Life and Epis. p. 557.) 

Canon Farrar, Episcopalian, says: "The dipping 
under the waters of baptism is his union with Christ's 
death ; his rising out of the waters of baptism is a 
resurrection with Christ, and the birth to a new 
life." (Life and Works of Paul, p. 362.) 

Prof. J. J. Oosterzee, Professor in the University 
of Utrecht, in his recent work on Christian Dog- 
matics, vol. 2, p. 749, says : " This sprinkling, which 
appears to have come first generally into use in the 
thirteenth century, in place of the entire immersion 
of the body, in imitation of the previous baptism 
of the sick, has certainly this imperfection, that the 
symbolical character of the act is expressed by it 
much less conspicuously than by complete immer- 
sion and burial under water." 

I will close this chapter with a statement of Dr. 
George P. Fisher, Professor of Ecclesiastical His- 
tory in Yale University, 1887, Beginnings of Chris- 
tianity, p. 565: "Baptism, it is now generally agreed 
among scholars, was commonly by immersion." 



108 IMMERSION. 

CHAPTER XIY. 

WHAT THE GREEK FATHERS SAY. 

''VT'O one doubts that there is much obscurity 
connected with many of the authors and in 
the writings of those who are commonly called the 
fathers. The most remarkable errors are advo« 
cated, and the closest discrimination must be used 
in rating their value. Yet upon the action of 
baptism we can safely follow them ; because this 
relates to the use of a word and a mere statement 
of facts. It is not a question of deductions and 
fancies, but of an act received from the apostles. 
In this regard their testimony may be regarded 
highly. I shall not enter into a discussion as to 
the authenticity of their writings, but set them 
down as belonging to the years in which they are 
usually set down by scholars. 

Among the so-called Apostolic fathers Barnabas 
is the only one who speaks of baptism, and his 
reference is clearly to immersion. 

Barnabas, A. D. 119, says: "Blessed are they 
who, placing their trust in the cross, have gone 
down into the water; for, says he, they shall re- 
ceive their reward in due time; then he declares^ 



WHAT THE GREEK FATHERS SAY. 109 

I will recompense them. . . . This meaneth, 
that we indeed descend into the water full of sins 
and defilement, but come up bearing fruit in our 
heart, having the fear of God and trust in Jesus 
in our spirits." ( Epis. xi, Ante-Mc. Path., vol. 1, 
p. 144.) 

Justin Martyr, A. D. 139, is the first who gives 
a detailed statement of how baptism was per- 
formed. We are willing to accept this statement 
of the act. " I will also relate," says he, " the 
manner in which we dedicate ourselves to God, 
where we have been made new through Christ; 
lest, if we omit this, we seem to be unfair in 
the explanation we are making, as many as are 
persuaded and believe that what we teach and 
say is true, and undertake to be able to live 
accordingly, are instructed to pray and to entreat 
God with fasting, for the remission of the sins 
that are past, we praying and fasting with them. 
Then they are brought by us where there is water, 
and are regenerated in the same manner in which 
we ourselves were regenerated. For in the name 
of God, the Father, and Lord of the universe, and 
of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy 
Spirit, they receive the washing with water." 
(1 Apol. ch. Ixi, Ante-Nic. Fath., vol. 1, p. 183.) 

This passage unquestionably refers to immersion. 



110 IMMERSION. 

Moses Stuart, the Presbyterian, commenting upon 
it, says : " I am persuaded that this passage as a, 
whole, most naturally refers to immersion, for why 
on any other ground should the convert who is to- 
be initiated go out to the place where there i& 
water. There could be no need of this if mere 
sprinkling, or partial affusion only, was customary 
in the time of Justin." (On Bap., p. 144.) 

Irenseus, A. D. 177, says, speaking of Naaman : 
'^And dipped himself, (says the Scripture,) seven 
times in Jordan. It was not for nothing that 
Naaman of old, when suffering from leprosy, was. 
purified upon his being baptized, but (it served) 
as an indication to us. For as we are lepers in 
sin, we are made clean, by means of the sacred 
water, and the invocations of the Lord, from our 
old transgressions ; being spritually regenerated as 
new born babes, even as the Lord has declared : 
except a man be born again through the water and 
the Spirit, he shall not enter the kingdom of 
heaven.'^ (Frag. 34., Ante-Nic. Fath., vol. 1, p. 574.) 

The Pastor of Hermas, A.D. 160, says : " They 
were obliged to ascend through water in order that 
they might be made alive ; for, unless the deadness 
of their life was laid aside, they could not in any 
way enter into the kingdom of God. . . . The 
seal is the water ; they descend into the water dead. 



WHAT THE GREEK FATHERS SAY. Ill 

and they arise alive." (Sim. ix, ch. xvi, Ante- 
Nic. Fath., vol. 2, p. 49.) 

Origen, A. D. 184 — 254, says : " The washing in 
water is the symbol of the purification of the soul 
cleansed of all impurity of sin." (Com. John, 
t. viii.) Again, " Man therefore through this wash- 
ing buried with Christ in regeneration." (Com. 
Math.) 

Hippolytus, A. D. 236, appears as a western 
preacher speaking and writing in Greek. He says : 
" Do you see, beloved, how the prophets spake be- 
fore time of the purifying power of baptism. For 
he who comes down in faith to the laver of regen- 
eration, and renounces the devil, and joins himself 
to Christ; who denies the enemy, and makes the 
confession that Christ is God ; who puts off the 
bondage and puts on the adoption, — he comes up 
from the baptism as brilliant as the sun, and flash- 
ing forth the beams of righteousness, which, indeed, 
is the chief thing, he returns a son of God and 
joint heir with Christ." (Holy. Theoph., Ante- 
Nic. Fath., vol. 5, p. 237.) 

Baron Bunsen, who discovered the lost books of 
Hippolytus, has this to say : " The apostolic church 
made the school the connecting link between her- 
self and the world. The object of this education 
was admission into the free society and brother- 



112 IMMEESION. 

hood of the church and community. The church 
adhered rigidly to the principle, as constituting the 
true import of the baptism ordained of Christ, that 
no one can be a member of the communion of 
saints, but by his own free acts and deeds, his own 
solemn vow made in the presence of the church. 
It was with this understanding that the candidate 
for baptism was immersed in water, and admitted 
as a brother, upon his confession of the Father, 
the Son, the Holy Ghost.'' (Hip. His Age, vol. 2, 
p. 105.) 

Gregory Thaumaturgus, A. D. 240, represents 
Jesus as pleading with John to baptize him in 
Jordan. He says : " Immerse me in the streams of 
Jordan, even as she who bore me wrapped me in 
the children's swaddling clothes. Grant me thy 
baptism even as the virgin granted me her milk. 
Lay hold of this head of mine, which the seraphim 
revere. With thy right hand lay hold on this head, 
that is related to thyself in kinship. Lay hold of 
this head, which nature has made to be touched. 
Lay hold of this head, which for this very purpose 
has been formed by myself and my Father. Lay 
hold of this head of mine, which, if any one does 
lay hold of it in piety, will save him from ever 
suffer ing shipwreck. Baptize me, who am destined 
to baptize those who believe on me with water, 



WHAT THE GREEK FATHERS SAY. 113 

and with the Spirit, and with fire; with water 
capable of washing away the defilement of sins ; 
with the Spirit, capable of making the earthly 
spiritual ; with fire, naturally fitted to consume the 
thorns of transgressions. On learning these words, 
the Baptist directed his mind to the object of the 
salvation, and comprehended the mystery which he 
had received, and discharged the divine command; 
for he Avas at once pious and ready to obey, and 
stretching forth slowly his right hand, which seemed 
both to tremble and to rejoice, he baptized the 
Lord." (Four Hom. Ante-Nic. Fath., vol. 6, p. 70.) 

Chrysostora, 347, says: "To be baptized and 
to submerge, then to emerge, is a symbol of descent 
to the grave, and of ascent from it." (Hom. 40 in 
1 Cor. i.) Again he says : " We, as in a sepulcher, 
immersing our heads in water, the old man is 
buried, and sinking down, the hole is covered at 
once ; then as we emerge, the new man rises again." 
(Cap. iii, Johanis.) 

Diouysius says: " Properly the total covering by 
water is taken from an image of death and burial 
out of sight." (Areop. di Eccl. Heir. c. 2.) 

Basil, A. D. 330, says : " By the three immersions, 
and by the like number of invocations, the great 
mystery of baptism is completed." (De Spirtu, c. 15.) 



114 IMMERSION. 



CHAPTER XY. 

WHAT THE LATIN FATHERS SAY. 

np HE testimony of the Latin fathers is equally 
as conclusive as that of the Greeks. I begin 
with Tertullian, A. D. 150, the oldest of the Latin 
fathers. He makes frequent reference to baptism. 
He says: "When entering the water, we make 
profession of the Christian faith in the words of 
its rule; we bear public testimony that we have 
renounced the devil, his pomp and his angels.'^ 
(De Spec. ch. iv.) Again, "To deal," says he, 
" with this matter briefly, I shall begin with bap- 
tism. When we are going to enter the water, but 
a little before, in the presence of the congregation 
and under the hand of the president, we solemnly 
profess that we disown the devil, and his pomp and 
his angels. Thereupon we are thrice immersed, 
making a somewhat ampler pledge than the Lord 
has appointed in the Gospel. Then we are taken 
up (as new born children).'^ (De Corona ch. iii.) 
Against Marcion, ch. xxviii, he says: "He there- 
fore seals man, who had never been unsealed in 
respect of him ; washes man who had never been 
defiled so far as he was concerned; and into this 



WHAT THE LATIN FATHERS SAY. 115 

sacrament of salvation wholly plunges that flesh 
which is beyond the pale of salvation." On the 
Resurrection, ch. xlii, he says : " Know ye not, 
that so many of us as are dipped into Jesus 
Christ, are baptized into his death. We are, there- 
fore, buried with him by baptism into death, that 
just as Christ was raised up from the dead, even so 
we also should walk in newness of life.'' Ter- 
tullian has also written a treatise on baptism. He 
says, ch. iv : " And accordingly it makes no differ- 
ence whether a man be washed in a sea or a pool, a 
stream or a fount, a lake or a trough ; nor is there 
any distinction between those whom John baptized 
in the Jordan and those whom Peter baptized in the 
Tiber, unless withal the Eunuch whom Philip bap- 
tized in the midst of his journeys with chance water, 
derived (therefrom) more or less of salvation than 
others.'' On Bap. ch. xiii, he says: "For the 
law of dipping has been imposed, and the formula 
prescribed : Go, he saith, teach the nations, dip- 
ping them into the name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." 

So manifestly does Tertullian teach immersion 
that Dr. George Campbell does not hesitate to 
state : " The word baptizeiuy both in sacred authors, 
and in classical, signifies to dip, to plunge, to 
immerse, and was rendered by Tertullian, the 



116 IMMERSION. 

oldest of the Latin Fathers, tingere; the term 
used for dyeing cloth, which was by immersion." 
(Four Gos. vol. 4, p. 24.) And Moses Stuart 
remarks : " I do not see how any doubt can 'well 
remain, that in ^ Tertullian's time the practice of 
the African church, to say the least, as to the 
mode of baptism, must have been that of trine 
immersion." On Bapt. p. 146.) 

Cyprian, A. D. 250, Epis. xxiv, renders the 
commission : " The Lord, when after his resurrec- 
tion he sent forth his apostles, charges them 
saying, all power is given unto me in heaven and 
in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, 
dipping them into the name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; teaching them 
to observe all things whatsoever I have com- 
manded you." And quoting Gal. iii : 27, Epis. 
75, he says : " For if the apostle does not speak 
falsely when he says. As many of you as are dip- 
ped into Christ have put on Christ, certainly he 
who has been baptized among them into Christ, 
has put on Christ." 

Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, A. D. 340, says: 
"Thou wast asked. Dost thou believe in God 
the Father Almighty. Thou saidst, I believe, 
and thus thou wast immersed, that is, wast buried." 
(Sacram. Lit. ii, c. 7.) 



WHAT THE LATIN FATHERS SAY. 117 

The great Augustine says : " After you pro- 
fessed your belief three times, did we submerge 
your heads in the sacred fountain." (Horn, iv.) 
'' Rightly," says he, in another place, " are ye 
immersed three times, who have received baptism 

in the name of Christ For that thrice 

repeated submersion expresses a resemblance of 
the Lord's death." 

Jerome, A. D. 331, says: "And thrice were 
we immersed, that there may appear one sacrament 
of the Trinity." (Epis. ad Eph. ch. iv.) 

Alcuin, A. D. 735, to the brethren at Lyons, 
Epis. xc, writes : " To us it seems indeed, accord- 
ing to our feeble judgment, that as the inner man 
is formed anew after the image of his Maker, in 
the faith of the Holy Trinity, so the outer man 
should be washed with a trine immersion ; that 
what the Spirit invisibly works in the soul, that 
the priest may visibly imitate in water." In 
describing the act of baptism he says : " And so, in 
the name of the holy Trinity, he is baptized by 
trine immersion." (Epis. xc. col. 292.) 

There can remain no question from these 
extracts that the early Latin fathers taught immer- 
sion as the act of Christian baptism. For the 
first time, in the writings of Tertullian, we cross 
trine immersion. He expressly says, however, 



118 IMMEKSION. 

that this "is somewhat more than the Lord pre- 
scribed in the Gospel." Jerome also states that 
trine baptism is only a matter of tradition. "Many 
of the things/' says Jerome, " which are observed 
in the churches by tradition, have usurped to 
themselves the authority of the written law (of the 
Scriptures) ; such as to immerse the head three 
times in the bath.'' (Advers. Lucif. c. 4.) But the 
act of baptism, which is by immersion, remains 
untouched. The fathers are unanimous in favor 
of dipping. 



TEACHING OF THE APOSTLES. 119 



CHAPTER XVI. 

*'THE TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES." 

"TN 1884 a translation of this work was given to 
the English-speaking world by Archdeacon Far- 
rar. It had been discovered by Bryennios in 1873, 
and an edition of it printed by him in 1883. It 
bore a very significant signature — " Leon, Notary 
and Sinner" — and the Greek date 6564, which 
equals 1056. It at once created the wildest en- 
thusiam among our Pedobaptist friends. The Bap- 
tist position was certainly overthrown, and our 
position was utterly untenable ! Yet out of this 
very thing has come a great good to the Baptists. 
*^ The Teaching " has caused unlimited discussion, 
and every agitation of the baptismal question is 
to our advantage. We have every thing to gain 
when this subject is stirred. After seven years the 
sweep of scholarship is all toward immersion, and 
we are more firmly implanted in our position than 
€ver before. 

The famous chapter that was relied on to do such 
wonderful things is found in the Constantinople edi- 
tion, pp. 27-29, and is translated by Dr. Schaff as 
follows : " Now concerning baptism, baptize thus : 



120 IMMERSION. 

Having first taught all these things, baptize ye in 
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost, in living water. And if thou hast not 
living water, baptize in other water ; and if thou 
canst not in cold, then in warm (water). But if 
thou hast neither, pour (water) thrice upon the 
head in the name of the Father, and of the Son,, 
and of the Holy Ghost. But before baptism let 
the baptizer and the baptized fast, and any others 
who can ; but thou shalt command the baptizer to 
fast for one or two days before." 

I will make several interesting observations : 

1. This is undoubtedly a very great variation 
from the teaching of the New Testament; and it 
matters not what this book says, the New Testa- 
ment is the standard of authority. The New Tes- 
tament nowhere calls baptism ehcheo, to pour; it 
is always haptizo, to dip. This alone stamps this, 
book of late origin. 

2. Immersion is plainly preferred, and pouring 
is only allowed in the extreme cases, and that 
must be performed three times. As Dr. Schaff re- 
marks : " The preference of the ante-Nicene church 
was for baptism in a running stream, as the Jor- 
dan, the Nile, the Tiber.'' (Teaching, p. 185.) 

3. Fasting is as fully and emphatically taught 
as is pouring; indeed the injunction is absolute. 



TEACHING OF THE APOSTLES. 121 

4. There are some other very fatal objections 
to pedobaptism in this book : (1.) Infant baptism 
is left out of the " Teaching." In trying to over- 
throw immersion, infant baptism is destroyed. In- 
struction is positively enjoined before baptism, and 
this forever excludes infant baptism. Dr. Schaff 
admits that '' infant baptism is not contemplated in 
the Didache." (2.) This book teache^s the Baptist 
doctrine of close communion. No one but bap- 
tized persons must come to the table of the Lord. 
Chapter ix commands that, "Let no one eat or 
drink of the Eucharist except those baptized into 
the name of the Lord." Our Presbyterian brother, 
Dr. Schaff, is still giving us good testimony. He 
says : " The communion is for baptized believers, 
and for them only. Baptism is the sacramental 
sign and seal of regeneration and conversion; the 
Lord's Supper is the sacrament of sanctification 
and growth in spiritual grace. . . . Hence the 
Apostolic Constitutions lay great stress on the ex- 
clusion of unbelievers from the Eucharist." (Teach- 
ing, p. 193.) (3.) The Teaching is also fatal to the 
doctrine of Episcopacy, for only two classes of offi- 
cers are recognized — Bishops and Deacons. These 
are to be elected by the people. The Greek verb 
means, in classical writers, to stretch out the hand, 
or to vote by show of hands ; then to elect. This 



122 IMMERSION. 

is rather a discouraging view of the matter to our 
Pedobaptist friends. 

5. The book is full of all kinds of childish 
twaddle. The truth is that it is supremely silly 
in many places. Concerning the character of the 
work, Bishop Cleveland Coxe in his prefatory note 
says : ^^ Even Lactantius, in his Institutes, shapes 
his instructions to Constantine by the Dua Via, 
which seemed to have been formulated in the ear- 
liest ages for the training of catechumens. The 
elementary nature and ^the childishness' of the 
work are thus accounted for, and I am sure that 
the ' Mystagogic ' teaching of Cyril receives light 
from this view of the matter. This work was food 
for ^ lambs ' ; it was not meant to meet the wants 
of those ^of full age.* It may prove, as Dr. Riddle 
hints, that the Teaching, as we have it in the Bry- 
ennios document^ is tainted by the views of some 
nascent sect or heresy, or by the incompetency 
of some obscure local church as yet unvisited by 
learned teachers and evangelists. It seems to me 
not improbably influenced by views of the charis- 
mata, which ripened into Montanism, and which 
are illustrated by the warnings and admonitions of 
Hermas." (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7, p. 171.) 

Those who wish to follow this mixture of fool- 



TEACHIXG OF THE APOSTLES. 123 

ishness and heresy can do so, but I prefer the word 
of the living God as my counselor. 

6. The morality of the book is positively shock- 
ing. The very first chapter teaches that if a man 
is in need and steals it is all right. Hear it : " Woe 
to him that taketh ; for if one that is in need taketh, 
he shall be guiltless; but he that is not in need 
shall give account whereof he took and whereunto ; 
and being in durance shall be questioned touch- 
ing w^hat he did, and he shall not go out thence 
until he give back the last farthing.^' I am very 
glad we do not have to defend immersion with 
such stuff as this. 

7. The truth is that no t\vo writers agree in regard 
to scarcely any particulars concerning this book. 
There are the wildest and most absurd contradic- 
tions in regard to the writer, the time it was writ- 
ten, the country, and almost every detail connected 
with the work. Prof Harnack, who first announced 
this book to the Western World, and who has 
studied it more closely than any other, has fur- 
nished a series of articles for the Theologische Lite- 
raturzeitung. What we give below was published 
June, 12th, 1886, and republished in the New 
York Independent Aug. 26th, 1886. It put to- 
gether, without comment, the conflicting opinions 
that are held in regard to it. Dr. Harnack says : 



124 IMMERSION. 

"One investigator puts the newly discovered 
writing before the Pauline letters, or even before 
the council of the apostles (Sabatier) ; the second, 
in the time of Paul; the third, soon after the 
destruction of Jerusalem (Bestinann) ; the fourth, 
in the last decades of the first century (an idea that 
finds very much favor) ; the fifth, in the days of 
Trajan (also a favorite idea) ; the sixth, in the days 
of Barcochba ; the seventh, in the time of Antonines ; 
the eighth, about the time of Commodus ; the ninth, 
in the third century ; the tenth, in the fourth 
century; and there are some who favor the fifth 
or a later century. So much in reference to the 
time of composition. 

^^In other points matters stand no better. On 
the history of its transmission one says that it is 
the book known to the Fathers from the days of 
Clement; others deny this; a third party seeks a 
middle path in regard to the integrity of the book ; 
some say the book is from one author, and orig- 
inal ; others that it is a compilation, and is crowded 
with interpolations ; that it consists of two or more 
parts that originally did not belong together. In 
regard to the character of the book, some claim 
that it is well arranged, others that it is poorly ar- 
ranged; some that in parts it is well arranged, 
and in parts poorly arranged; some that the skill 



TEACHING OF THE APOSTLES. 125 

of the author must be admired ; others that the 
author has no idea of the literary arts. 

" With regard to the sources, some say that only 
the old Testament served as a source, and that all 
the rest is original, because older than all other 
Christian writings ; others say that there is nothing 
original in the book, but the whole is taken from 
other sources; some that the new Testament re- 
oeives no witness from the Didache; others that 
nearly all the New Testament books are used in 
it, and that the book itself thereby seems the best 
proof of its antiquity; some that Barnabas and 
Hermas are used; others that Barnabas is used, 
but that Hermas in turn used the 'Didache'; 
others, on the other hand, that Hermas was used, 
and that Barnabas is a later production; others 
that Philo, the Sybiline books, and the Gentile 
moralists were used ; others that in primitive apos- 
tolic simplicity the author has reproduced only the 
pure Gospel. 

" In regard to the standpoint of the author, some 
olaim that it is primitive-apostolic from the view 
of the Jewish Christians; others, that it is post- 
apostolic and Jewish-Christian; others, anti-Paul- 
ine ; others, that it is strongly influenced by Paul ; 
others, that it is Saddusaic; others, vulgar, hea- 
thenish; others, dangerously Ebionitic; others, Mar- 



126 IMMERSION. 

cionitic ; others, Montanistic ; others, Theodosian ; 
others, quite moralizing; others, encratistic; oth- 
ers, thoroughly Byzantine, but under a transparent 
mask ; others, that the standpoint can not be discov- 
ered, since the author has not treated of his faith ; 
others, classically evangelical. 

" With regard to the importance of the book, some 
say that it is the most important discovery of the 
century, and should be received into the canon of 
the New Testament; that it is the whole Bible in 
nuce; that it solves the greatest problems; that it 
is peculiar, and should be used with care; that it 
shows the average Christianity; that as a compi- 
lation it can not be used in picturing any period; 
that it shows poverty of contents ; the Christianity 
of the author can only be lamented ; that it is ra- 
tionalistic and flat, but nevertheless interesting; 
that it is a miserable production, without any im- 
portance for those of our times ; the book is char- 
acteristic only of the Byzantine forger. Places 
assigned for the writing: Egypt, Greece, Syria, 
Jerusalem, Rome, Asia Minor, Constantinople. 

" Then some regard it as setting forth the apos- 
tolic, the Presbyterian, the Episcopal, or no system 
of church government whatever. It is considered 
of great value because it favors the Protestant, or 
the Catholic, or the Baptist, or the anti-Baptist, or 



TEACHING OF THE APOSTLES. 127 

the Chiliastic, or the anti-Chiliastic, or the Irving- 
ian, or some other church party ; because it is still 
apostolic and anti-Catholic and at the same time 
Catholic; because its prophets are still apostles of 
the real primitive Christianity; others, then, claim 
that they are new prophets, or no prophets at all, 
but rather inventive swindlers and parasites; oth- 
ers, that they are no swindlers, but homunculi pro- 
duced by a forger." 

I have given this full discussion of this work on 
account of the prominence given to the Teaching 
in so many quarters. It will easily be seen that 
scholars must come nearer to an agreement before 
the work can be seriously quoted as an authority. 
Granting the extremest position of our opponents, 
we gain by the book quite as much as we lose. 
The truth is that the part that may appear to favor 
the Pedobaptists is really the part that is directly 
against the teaching of the New Testament. 



128 IMMEESION. 



CHAPTEK XVII. 

ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY IN FAVOR OF 
IMMERSION. 

A LL standard historians, regardless of denomi- 
-^-^ nation, assert that immersion was the primi- 
tive act of baptism. Time would fail me to give 
them all, for their name is legion. I will content 
myself, therefore, by making such selections as I 
may deem best. 

As the first authority I will give Dr. Arthur P. 
Stanley, a late dignitary of the Church of England. 
He was the son of a bishop. He was for seven 
years Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Oxford 
University. He is the author of several works of 
high critical value, and stood at the head of En- 
glish scholars. His last position was Lord Rector 
of St. Andrew's and Dean of Westminster Abbey. 
He says of baptism : " Into this society they passed 
by an act as natural as it was expressive. The 
plunge into the bath of purification, long known 
among the Jewish nation as the symbol of a change 
of life, had been revived with a fresh energy by 
the Essenes, and it received a definite significa- 
tion and impulse from the austere prophet who de- 



ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY. 129 

rived his name from the ordinance. This rite was 
retained as the pledge of entrance into a new and 
universal communion. In that early age the scene 
of the transaction was either some deep wayside 
spring or well, as for the Ethiopian, or some rush- 
ing river, as the Jordan, or some vast reservoir, as 
at Jericho or Jerusalem, whither, as in the baths of 
Caracalla at Eome, the whole population resorted 
for swimming or washing. The earliest scene of 
the immersion was in the Jordan. That rushing 
river — the one river of Palestine — found at last 
its fit purpose." (Christian Institutions, p. 2.) 

Dr. Adolf Harnack, of Geissen, the foremost 
living German Church historian, in reply to some 
questions of C. E. W. Dobbs, D. D., made the 
following statement on "the present state of 
opinion among German scholars," concerning the 
ancient act of baptism : 

Geissen, Jan. 16th, 1885. 
C. E. W. Dobbs, D. D.: 

Dear Sir, — Referring to your three inquiries, I 
have the honor to reply : 

1st. Baptism undoubtedly signifies immersion, 
(eintauchen.) 

2d. No proof can be found that it signifies any 

thing else in the New Testament, and in the most 
9 



130 IMMERSION. 

ancient Christian literature. The suggestion re- 
garding " a sacred sense/^ is out of the question. 
3d. There is no passage in the New Testament 
which suggests the supposition that aay New Tes- 
tament author attached to the word baptizein any 
other sense th2ineintauchen=untertauchen,^' (SchafiPs 
Teach, of the Twelve, p. 50.) 

Dr. Joseph Langen, Old Catholic Professor in 
Bonn, Germany, in a letter to myself, in April, of 
this year, says : " In reply to your pleasing letter 
of March 13th, I have to say the following : 

" 1. The meaning of the word baptizein is to 
dip under. 

" 2. The authors of the New Testament have 
never used the word in any other sense. 

"3. In Western countries not till after the 
eleventh century, after the separation from the 
East, was pouring on the head generally established 
in the place of dipping under." 

Dr. Philip Schaff, the eminent Presbyterian 
scholar and historian, of New York, says : ^' The 
usual form of baptism was by immersion. This is 
inferred from the original of the Greek baptizein 
and baptismos; from the analogy of John's bap- 
tism in the Jordan; from the apostle's comparison 
of the sacred rite with the miraculous passage of 



ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY. 131 

the Red Sea, and the escape of the ark from the 
flood, with a cleansing and refreshing bath, and 
with burial and resurrection ; finally, from the 
general custom of the ancient church, which pre- 
vails in the East to this day." (Christ. Ch., vol. 1, 
pp. 468, 469.) 

Homersham Cox, a very learned English judge, 
say§ in his recent book, The First Century of 
Christianity : ^' The Jews baptized by immersion, 
and this was undoubtedly the form of the Chris- 
tian institution originally, though subsequently 
baptism by affusion was allowed. Even so late 
as the age of Cyprian (the third century) this 
method, though tolerated, was not the most 
usual." (p. 227.) 

George P. Fisher, Professor of Ecclesiastical 
History in Yale University, says: "Baptism, it 
is now generally agreed among scholars, was com- 
monly by immersion." (Begin. Christ, p. 565.) 

Prof L. L. Paine, D. D., of the Bangor Theo- 
logical Seminary, some time since surprised some 
of his friends by teaching that immersion w^as bap- 
tism, and he wrote the following in his own justi- 
fication : "It may be honestly asked by some. 
Was immersion the primitive form of baptism, 
and, if so, what then ? As to the question of fact, 
the testimony is ample and decisive. No matter 



132 IMMEKSION. 

of Church history is clearer. The evidence is all 
one way, and all church historians of any repute 
agree in accepting it. We can not even claim 
originality in teaching it in a Congregational Sem- 
inary. And we really feel guilty of a kind of 
anachronism in writing an article to insist upon it. 
It is a point on which ancient, mediaeval and mod- 
ern historians alike, Catholic and Protestant, 
Luther and Calvinist, have no controversy. And 
the simple reason for this unanimity, is that the 
statements of the early fathers are %o clear, and 
the light shed upon their statements from the early 
customs of the church, is so conclusive, that no 
historian who cares for his reputation would dare 
to deny it, and no historian who is worthy of the 
name would wish to. There are some historical 
questions concerning the early church, on which 
the most learned writers disagree — for example 
the question of infant baptism ; but on this one of 
the early practice of immersion, the most distin- 
guished antiquarians, such as Bingham, Augusti, 
Coleman, Smith, and historians such as Mosheim, 
Geiseler, Hase, Milman, Schaff, Alzog (Catholic) 
hold a common language." 

What is more, scholars of the highest repute state 
that immersion was the common act of baptism for 
thirteen hundred years. This is a very strong 



ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY. 133 

point, and I will let the scholars speak for them- 
selves. 

Dr. H. Holtzmann, Professor in Strasburg Uni- 
versity, writes me April 4th, 1890 : " The meaning 
of the word baptizeiuy as of the simple baptein, is to 
' dip in, to dip under.' At a later date, instead of 
immersion, aspersion occurs in the cases of sick- 
ness, and was called clinic baptism. Aspersion be- 
came only more common in consequence of the 
baptism of children, and never obtained a mean- 
ing similar to immersion until after the thirteenth 
century." 

Dr. Hilgenfeld, Professor in the University of 
Jena, writes me : " Only in the AVestern Church, 
and after the thirteenth century, did sprinkling 
come in as the usual mode of baptism, so that it 
became the general custom in the fourteenth cent- 
ury. The baptism by immersion, however, is still 
preserved by the Greek Catholic Church.'' 

Prof. Gaston Bonet-Maury, Professor in the Prot- 
estant Theological Faculty of Paris, writes : " The 
literal meaning of the Greek word baptizein is to 
plunge, to immerse, to dip. Baptism by immer- 
sion is still practiced by all the orthodox Greek 
churches of the East. This form was practiced in 
the West until the close of the thirteenth century. 
But at the close of the thirteenth century, baptism 



134 IMMERSION. 

by aspersion prevailed definitely for the baptism 
of children. In 1311 the Council of Ravenna al- 
lowed free choice between immersion and aspersion. 
Thomas Aquinas declares the two forms equally 
legitimate. Baptism by immersion has been pre- 
served until the present time in the cathedral of 
Milan. In the sixteenth century Edward YI. and 
Queen Elizabeth w^ere baptized by immersion, and 
the English liturgy of baptism enjoined immersion 
for the public baptism of little children. Since the 
beginning of the seventeenth century this form has 
been very rare in the non-Baptist churches." 

Dr. Philip Schaff, Presbyterian, says : " Pouring 
and sprinkling were still exceptional in the ninth 
century, according to Walafrid Strabo (De Rel. 
Eccl. c. 26) ; but they made gradual progress, with 
the spread of infant baptism, as the most convenient 
mode, especially in northern climates, and came into 
common use in the West at the end of the thirteenth 
century. '^ 

Dollinger, the eminent Catholic author who so 
recently died at Bonn, says in his History : ^^ Bap- 
tism by immersion continued to be the prevailing 
practice of the Church as late as the fourteenth 
century." (Hist. Ch. vol. 2, p. 294.) 

Dean Stanley says : " For the first thirteen cent- 
uries the almost universal practice of baptism was 



ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY. 135 

that of which we read in the New Testament, and 
which is the very meaning of the word ' baptize ' — 
that those who were baptized were plunged, sub- 
merged, immersed into the water. That practice 
is still, as we have seen, continued in Eastern 
churches." (Chris. Ins. p. 17.) 

Dr. Funk, of Tubingen University, writes that, 
'* In the thirteenth century the practice of pouring 
began considerably to prevail ; and in some places 
(as in France) somewhat earlier than this." 

Here are seven witnesses — and many more might 
be given — all testifying that immersion was the 
common practice for thirteen hundred years. They 
say it was the universal practice, save those who 
were baptized upon their sick-bed. Could I want 
stronger testimony to the primitive rite? These 
men are Presbyterians, Catholics, and Episcopali- 
ans, and are not prejudiced toward the Baptists. 
The testimony is sure, and our position remains 
tenable. The voice of history is fully on our side, 
and all antiquity says' that the ancient act of bap- 
tism was an immersion in water. 



136 IMMERSON. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

SPEINKLING A HEATHEN CUSTOM. 

rpHE practice of sprinkling, for baptism, is of 
pagan origin. In the days of the apostles 
corrupt practices began to creep into the churches. 
In the course of time, as the Roman Catholic- 
Church began to extend its borders, thousands of 
baptized, but unconverted heathen, were received 
into her communion. These persons assumed the 
name of Christians, but brought along with them 
their corrupt and abominable practices. Thejr 
changed their name, but not their rites and cer-^ 
emonies. One of the doctrines they brought with 
them was that of baptismal salvation. This has 
been the bane of pure Christianity. But along 
with this came the attendant evils of sprinkling 
and infant baptism. The heathens worshiped the 
river as a god, and believed that a bath in its 
waters, or its sacred water poured or sprinkled 
upon themselves, would bring everlasting life. It 
was a matter of indiiference to them how the 
water should be applied. 

With the corruptions of Christianity this idea 
began to prevail among the thousands who came 



SPRINKLING A HEATHEN CUSTOM. 137 

from the heathen. The argument was to them 
complete and convincing: If water baptism saved 
a man, and this many of the fathers most ardently 
believed, it was very necessary that a man should 
not die without the " laver of regeneration." But 
as it is not always convenient to dip a man who 
was at the point of death, copious pouring was 
resorted to as in the case of Novatian; and from 
this confessed innovation, sprinkling has become 
the general practice of the Roman Catholic Church, 
and of those churches which have been connected 
with it. The same matter of convenience and sal- 
vation applied to infants, and so it became cus- 
tomary to sprinkle them in case they were weak, 
and from that came the prevailing custom of infant 
sprinkling. If there was no such doctrine as bap- 
tismal salvation, infant baptism would die a nat- 
ural death, and sprinkling would never have been 
a custom in the Christian world. 

But I will make good these statements that bap- 
tismal salvation and affusion are of heathen origin, 
and have been engrafted as a custom upon the 
Christian religion. These propositions will more 
fully appear from the unimpeachable authorities 
that I present. I wish especially to acknowledge 
my indebtedness to a very able editorial which 



138 IMMERSION. 

appeared in the January number, 1891, of the 
OutlooTc. 

The pagans were accustomed to worship the sun, 
rivers and fountains, and sometimes their rites 
were a combination of ceremonies to these. It is 
in this way that Virgil writes : 

^^He started up, and viewing the rising beams 
of the ethereal sun, in his hollow palms, with 
pious form, he raised water from the river, and 
poured forth to heaven these words : Ye nymphs, 
ye Laurentine nymphs, whence rivers have their 
origin ; and thou, O Father Tiber, with thy sacred 
river; receive ^neas and defend him at length 
from dangers. In whatever source thy lake con- 
tains thee, compassionate to our misfortunes, from 
whatever soil thou springest forth most beauteous, 
horn-bearing river, monarch of the Italian streams, 
ever shalt thou be honored with my veneration, 
ever with my offerings. O grant us thy present 
aid, and by nearer aid confirm thy divine oracles.'' 
(^neid, b. 8, 1. 70-82.) 

Ovid, describing the feast of Pales, held in May, 
exhibits the same combination of sun and water 
worship : 

"Often in truth have I leaped over the fires 
l^laced in three rows, and the dripping bough of 
laurel has flung the sprinkled waters. 



SPRINKLING A HEATHEN CUSTOM. 139 

Shepherd, purify the full sheep at the beginning of 
twilight, let the water first sprinkle them, and let 
the broom made of twigs sweep the ground. . . . 
Protect thou alike the cattle, and let all harm fly 
away, repelled from my stalls. Let that happen 
which I pray for, and may we at the close of the 
year, offer cakes of good size to Pales, the mistress 
of the shepherds. With these words must the 
goddess be propitiated; turning to the East, do 
you repeat these words three times, and in the 
running stream thoroughly wash your hands." 
(Fasti, bk. 4, 1. 728-779.) 

In another place Ovid tells us of Deucalion and 
Phyrra, resolving to seek the sacred oracles, in 
prayer, at the temple of the goddess Themis ; he 
says : 

" There is no delay ; together they repair to the 
waters of Cephsius, though not clear, yet now 
cutting their wonted channel. Then when they 
had sprinkled the waters poured on their clothes 
and their heads, they turn their steps to the tem- 
ple of the sacred goddess, the roof of which was 
defiled with foul moss, and whose altars were 
standing without fires." (Metamorphoses, bk. 1, 
fable 10, lines 651, &c.) 

Sir Monier- Williams, describing water worship, 
and one of the temples in India, says : 



140 IMMERSION. 

" Thither, therefore, a constant throng of wor- 
shippers continually resort, bringing with them 
offerings of flowers, rice and other grains, which 
they throw into the water thirty or forty feet below 
the ground. A Brahman is perpetually employed 
in drawing up the putrid liquid, the smell, or 
rather stench of which, from incessant admixture 
of decaying flowers and of vegetable matter, making 
the neighborhood almost unbearable. This he pours 
with a ladel into the hands of the expectant crowd, 
who either drink it with avidity, or sprinkle it 
reverentially over their persons. A still more 
sacred well called the Manikarnika, situated on 
one of the chief Ghats leading to the Ganges, owes 
its origin, in popular belief, to the fortunate cir- 
cumtance that one of Siva^s ear-rings happened ta 
fall on the spot. This well is near to the surface 
and quite exposed to view. It forms a small 
quadrangular pool, not more than three feet deep^ 
Four flights of steps on the four sides lead to the 
water, the disgusting foulness of which, in the 
estimation of countless pilgrims, vastly enhances, 
its efficacy for the removal of sin. The most 
abandoned criminals journey from the most distant 
parts of India to the margin of this sacred pooL 
There they secure the services of Brahmins, ap- 
pointed to the duty, and descending with them 



SPRINKLING A HEATHEN CUSTOM. 141 

into the water, are made to repeat certain texts and 
mutter certain mystic formulae, the meaning of 
•which they are wholly unable to understand. Then, 
while in the act of repeating the words put into 
their mouths, they eagerly immerse their entire 
persons beneath the offensive liquid. The long 
looked for dip over, a miraculous transformation 
is the result; for the foul water has cleansed the 
•still fouler soul. Few Hindus venture to doubt 
that the most depraved sinner in existence may 
thus be converted into an immaculate saint, worthy 
of being translated at once to the highest heavens 
of the God of Benares." (Brahminism and Hindu- 
ism by Sir Monier-Williams, M. A., D. C. L., Lon- 
don 1887.) 

In a still later work, Sir William describes the 
present baptismal custom in Thibet and Mongolia, 
as follows: 

^^It is noticeable that a kind of infant baptism 
is practiced in Thibet and Mongolia. It is usual 
to sprinkle children with consecrated water, or to 
immerse them entirely on the third or tenth day 
after birth. This is called khrus-sol (according to 
Jaschke). The priest consecrates the water by re- 
citing some formula, while candles and incense are 
burning. He then dips the child three times, bless- 
es it, and gives it a name. After performing the 



142 IMMERSION. 

ceremony he draws up the infant's horoscope. Thert 
as soon as the child can walk and talk, a second 
ceremony takes place, and prayers are said for its 
happy life, and an amulet or little bag is hung 
around its neck, filled with spells and charms against 
evil spirits and diseases.'' (Buddhism, etc.) 

Alabaster also says : 

" Baptism was a religious rite from very ancient 
times, the Brahmins holding that if any one who 
had sinned went to the banks of the Ganges and 
saying, ^ I will not sin again,' plunged into the 
stream, he would rise to surface free of sin, all his 
floating away. Sometimes when any one was sick 
unto death, his relatives would place him by the 
river, and give him water to drink, and pour 
water over him till he died, believing that he would 
thus die holy and go to heaven." (Buddhism, pp. 
30, 31.) 

Mallet says of baptism in Scandinavia : 

^^It was no less remarkable that a kind of in- 
fant baptism was practiced in the North, long before 
the dawning of Christianity, and had reached those 
parts. Snorri Sturlason, in his chronicle, speaking 
of a Norwegian noble who lived in the reign of 
JIarold Harfragra, relates that he poured water on 
the head of a new born child, and called him 
Hakon, from the name of his father. Harald him- 



SPRINKLING A HEATHEN CUSTOM. 143 

self had been baptized in the same manner, and it 
is noted of King Olaf Tryggvason, that his mother 
Astrida had him thus baptized and named as soon 
as he was born. The Livonians observed the same 
ceremony, which also prevailed among the Germans, 
as appears from a letter which the famous Pope 
Gregory the Third sent to their Apostle Boniface, 
directing expressly how to act in this respect. It 
is probable that all of these people might intend, 
by such a rite, to preserve their children from the 
sorceries and evil charms which wicked spirits 
might employ against them at the instant of their 
birth. Several nations of Asia and America have 
attributed such a power to ablutions of this kind ; 
nor were the Romans without such a custom, though 
they did not wholly confine it to new born infants." 
(Mallett's Scandinavian, p. 206.) 

S. Baring Gould testifies concerning pagan bap- 
tisms in Scandinavia as follows : 

"Among the Scandinavians, infant baptism was 
in vogue before the introduction of Christianity, 
and the rite accompanied the naming of the child. 
Before the accomplishment of this rite, the expo- 
sition of the babe w^as lawful, but after the ceremony 
it became murder. A baptism in blood seems to 
have been practiced by the Germans and Norsemen 
in remote antiquity; to this the traditions of the 



144 IMMERSION. 

horny Sigfrid, or Sigurd, and Wolfdietrich point. 
Dipping in water, and aspersion with water, or with 
the blood of a victim, was also customary among 
the Druids, as was also the baptism of Fire, perhaps 
borrowed by them from the Phoenicians. This 
was that passing through the fire to Mo lech alluded 
to repeatedly in the Jewish Scriptures." (Orig. 
and Devel. Eel. Bel. Circu. p. 397.) 

Prescott speaks of the amazement with which 
the early Spaniards beheld the points of similarity 
between the customs of the Pagan Mexicans and 
the Roman Catholic Church : He says : 

^^ With the same feelings they witnessed another 
ceremony, that of the Aztec baptism ; in which, after 
a solemn invocation, the head and lips of the in- 
fant were touched with water, and a name given 
to it; while the goddess Cioacoati, who presided 
over child-birth, was implored that the sin which 
was given to us before the beginning of the world, 
might not visit the child, but that, cleansed by 
these waters, it might live and.be born anew." 
(Con. of Mex. vol. 3, p. 369.) 

A full account of these pagan baptisms in Mex- 
ico is given by Shagun-de-Bernardino, as follows: 

"When every thing necessary for the baptism 
had been made ready, all the relations of the child 
were assembled, and the midwife, who was the 



SPRINKLING A HEATHEN CUSTOM. 145 

person that performed the rite of baptism, was 
summoned. At early dawn they met together in 
the court-yard of the house. When the sun had 
risen, the midwife, taking the child in her arms, 
called for a little earthen vessel of water, while 
those about her placed the ornaments which had 
been prepared for the baptism in the midst of the 
court. To perform the rite of baptism, she placed 
berself with her face toward the west, and imme- 
diately began to go through certain ceremonies. 
After this she sprinkled water on the head of the 
infant, saying, ^O my child, take and receive the 
water of the Lord of the world, which is our life, 
and is given for the increasing and renewing of 
our body. It is to wash and to purify. I pray 
that these heavenly drops may enter into your 
body and dwell there; that they may destroy and 
remove from you all the evil and sin which was 
given to you before tlie beginning of the world ; 
since all of us are under its power, being all the 
children of Chalchivitlycue ' (the goddess of water). 
She then washed the body of the child with water, 
and spoke in this manner: ^ Whencesoever thou 
comest, thou that art hurtful to this child, leave 
him and depart from him, for he now liveth anew, 
and is born anew ; now he is purified, and cleansed 

afresh. And our mother Chalchivitlycue again 
10 



146 IMMERSION. 

bringeth into the world.' Having thus prayed, 
the midwife took the child in both hands, lifted 
him toward heaven, and said : ' O Lord, thou seest 
here thy creature, whom thou hast sent into this, 
world, this place of sorrow, suffering, and peni- 
tence. Grant him, O Lord, thy gifts and thine 
inspiration, for thou art the great God, and with 
thee is the great goddess.' Torches of pine were 
kept burning during the performance of these cere- 
monies. When these things were ended they gave 
the child the name of some one of his ancestors,, 
in hope that he might shed a new luster over it. 
The name was given by the same midwife or 
priestess who baptized him." (Hist, de Neuva- 
Espana, lib. 6, cap. 37.) 

From these unimpeachable authorities nothing 
is more evident than that the heathens believed irt 
baptismal salvation, and practiced infant baptism, 
and that the act was pouring, sprinkling, and im- 
mersion indifferently. When some of the popular 
Church Liturgies of to-day are compared with the 
prayers and performances quoted above, the simi- 
larity is most striking and startling. The truth is 
that the ceremonies of infant sprinkling are taken 
from the Elusinian and Druidical lustrations. Many 
of the foremost Pedobaptist scholars do not deny, 
but freely admit, this fact. 



SPEINKLING A HEATHEN CUSTOM. 147 

Dr. Bennett, a Methodist author whom we have 
frequently quoted, repeatedly shows that in the 
architecture of the third and following centuries 
heathen thought and figures are used, and that a 
heathen god is in the only picture of pouring for 
baptism found in early art. His whole book on 
" Archaeology ^^ is a statement of this fact. 

Dean Stanley is even more explicit. He says : 
" It IS astonishing how many of these decorations 
are taken from heathen sources and copied from 
heathen paintings. There is Orpheus playing on 
his harp to the beasts ; there is Bacchus as the god 
of the vintage ; there is Psyche, the butterfly of 
the soul ; there is the Jordan as the god of the 
river. The Classical and the Christian, the He- 
brew and the Hellenic, elements had not yet 
parted. The strict demarkation, which the books 
of the period would imply, between the Christian 
Church and the heathen world, had not yet been 
formed, or was constantly effaced. The Catacombs 
had more affinity with the chapel of Alexander Se- 
verus, which contained Orpheus side by side with 
Abraham and Christ, than they have with the writ- 
ings of Tertullian, who spoke of heathen poets only 
to exult in their future torments ; or of Augustine, 
who regarded this very figure of Orpheus only as a 
mischievous teacher to be disparaged, not as a type 



148 IMMEKSION. 

of the two forms of heathen and Christian civiliza- 
tion. It agrees with the fact that the funeral in- 
scriptions are often addressed Dis manibus, Ho the 
funeral spirits.' '' (Inst. p. 230.) 

If any thing more was needed, the statement of 
the late Cardinal Newman would put it at rest 
when he speaks of these appendages as " the very 
instruments and appendages of demon worship.'^ 
(Devel. pp. 359, 360.) 

In truth the E-oman Catholic writers defended it 
as the very best policy possible. No man is higher 
authority among Roman Catholics than Cardinal 
Baronius. He says: 

'' It was permitted the Church to transfer to pi- 
ous uses those ceremonies which the pagans had 
wickedly applied in a superstitious worship, after 
having purified theni by consecration ; so that, to 
the greater contumely of the devil, all might honor 
Christ with those rites which he intended for his 
own worship. Thus the pagan festivals, laden with 
superstition, were changed into praiseworthy festi- 
vals of the martyrs; and the idolatrous temples 
were changed to sacred churches, as Theodoret 
shows." 

The scholarly Max MuUer says of the first three 
centuries : 

^'This age was characterized, far more than all 



SPRINKLING A HEATHEN CUSTOM. 149 

before it, by a spirit of religious syncretism, an 
eager thirst for compromise. To mold together 
thoughts which differed fundamentally, to grasp, 
if possible, the common elements pervading all the 
multifarious religions of the world, was deemed 
the proper business of philosophy, both in the East 
and in the AVest. It was a period, one has lately 
said, of mystic incubation, when India and Egypt, 
Babylon and Greece, were sitting together and gos- 
siping like crazy old women, chattering with tooth- 
less gums and silly brains about the dreams and 
joys of their youth, yet unable to recall one single 
thought or feeling with that vigor which once gave 
it light and truth. 

" It was a period of religious and metaphysical 
delirium, when every thing became every thing; 
when Maya and Sophia, Mithra and Christ, Yiraf 
and Isaiah, Belus, Zarvan, and Kronos were mixed 
up in one jumbled system of inane speculation, 
from which at least the East was delivered by the 
positive doctrines of Mohammed, the West by the 
pure Christianity of the Teutonic nations.'' (Last 
Res. of Persian Res. c. 3, sec. 1, part 1.) 

I would, therefore, state the case thus : In the 
New Testament we find no such things as bap- 
tismal salvation, infant baptism, sprinkling and 
pouring, godfathers, and many more such things; 



150 IMMERSION. 

but in contemporary heathenism we will find all 
of these things. A little later there are thousands 
of baptized but unconverted heathen received into 
the Church. They were required to change their 
name, but not their practices. It came to pass that 
all of these ceremonies found in heathenism, but 
unknown in the New Testament, were found in 
the Catholic Church. From whence came they? 
Only one answer can be given : They were taken 
from the pagans by way of compromise. 



THE BAPTISM OF THE SICK. 151 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE BAPTISM OF THE SICK. 

"TF immersion was so universally taught in the 
ancient Christianity, how was sprinkling in- 
troduced ? I answer in the baptism of the sick, or, 
as it was afterwards called, clinie baptism. The 
baptism of the sick originated in a dangerous 
heresy. Men had departed from the simplicity of 
the Gospel. The atoning efficacy of the blood of 
Christ was left out of sight, and the importance of 
baptism was overestimated. It was at this time that 
"the doctrine of baptismal salvation was spread abroad 
throughout the churches. Along with it were the 
attendant evils, infant baptism and sprinkling. It 
was argued that if infants were to die unbaptized, 
they would be eternally condemned. Since a man 
upon his sick bed could not be immersed easily, 
and if he died unbaptized, he would be lost, it was 
thought that a profusion of water poured upon him 
might save him. This was called clinic baptism. 

The first instance of clinic baptism upon record, 
indeed, the first example of affusion, is given in 
the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, which lies 
before me. It was the celebrated case of Nova- 



152 IMMEKSION. 

tian, A. D. 250. Eusebius says of him : " Being^ 
delivered by the exorcists, he fell into a severe 
sickness; and as he seemed about to die, he re- 
ceived baptism by affusion, on the bed where he- 
lay ; if, indeed, we can say such a one did receive 
it.^' (Nic. Fath. vol. 1, pp. 288, 289.) 
I will make some reflections on this case : 

1. This is the earliest instance of sprinkling- 
upon record. Pedobaptists have searched dili- 
gently, and they have never found an earlier. 
When was this? Two hundred and fifty years 
after Christ ! 

2. Sprinkling had its origin in the baptism of 
the sick. Eusebius mentions this case as peculiar. 
Many writers say that sprinkling and pouring 
originated in the baptism of the sick. Cyprian, 
Bishop of Carthage, A. D. 257, in answer ta 
Magnus, says : " You have asked also, dearest 
son, what I thought of those who have obtained 
God^s grace in sickness and weakness, whether 
they are to be accounted legitimate Christians, for 
that they are not to be washed, but sprinkled, with 

the saving water As far as my poor 

understanding conceives it, I think that the divine 
benefits can in no respect be mutilated and weak- 
ened; nor can any thing less occur in that case^ 
where with full and entire faith, both of the giver 



THE BAPTISM OF THE SICK. 153 

and of the receiver, is accepted what is drawn from 

the divine gift In the sacrament of 

salvation, when necessity compels, and God be- 
stows his mercy, the divine methods confer the 
whole benefit on believers ; nor ought it to trouble 
any one that sick people seem to be sprinkled or 
affused when they obtain the Lord's grace." (Ante- 
Nic. Fath., vol. 5, pp. 400, 401.) 

As late as 754 the monks of Cressy asked Pope 
Stephen II.: "Is it lawful, in cases of necessity 
occasioned by sickness, to baptize an infant by 
pouring water on its head from a cup or the 
hands?'' The Pope replied: "Such a baptism, 
performed in such a case of necessity, shall be ac- 
counted valid." Basnage says: " This was ac- 
counted the first law against immersion." 

The great historian Neander remarks: "In 
respect to the form of baptism, it was in con- 
formity with the original institution and the orig- 
inal import of the symbol, performed by immersion, 
as a sign of entire baptism into the Holy Spirit, of 
being entirely penetrated by the same. It was 
only with the sick, when the exigency required it, 
that any exception was made; and in this case 
baptism was administered by sprinkling. Many 
superstitious persons, clinging to the outward form, 
imagined that such baptism by sprinkling was not 



154 IMMERSION. 

fully valid; and hence they distinguished those 
who had been thus baptized by denominating them 
the dinicV' (Ch. Hist., vol 1, p. 310.) 

Geiseler is most emphatic, and calls things by the 
right name. He says: " It was often necessary to 
baptize the sick, and in that case sprinkling was 
substituted for the usual riteJ' (Ch. Hist., vol. 1, 
p. 159.) 

3. As it has been already intimated, all persons 
did not hold that this baptism was valid. ISTone 
thought it so good as immersion. Eusebius adds : 
^* If, indeed, it be proper to say that one like him 
did receive baptism.^' There would have been 
no dispute if sprinkling had been regarded as 
baptism. 

The historians are unanimous on this point. 
Dr. George C. Knapp, late Professor of Theology 
in the University of Halle, says : " Immersion is 
peculiarly agreeable to the institution of Christ, and 
to the practice of the apostolic church, and so even 
John baptized, and immersion remained common for 
a long time after ; except that in the third century, 
or perhaps earlier, the baptism of the sick was per- 
formed by sprinkling or affusion. Still some 
would not acknowledge this to be true baptism, and 
controversy arose concerning it, so unheard of was 



THE BAPTISM OF THE SICK. 155 

it at that time to baptize by affusion/' (Knapp's 
TheoL, p. 486.) 

Venema testifies : " To the essential rite of bap- 
tism in the third century, pertained immersion, and 
not aspersion, except in cases of necessity, and it 
was accounted a half perfect baptism. 

Salmasius: "Thus, Novatian, when sick, re- 
ceived baptism, being sprinkled, not baptized.'' 

Valesius says : " Therefore, baptism of this kind 
was not customary, and was esteemed imperfect." 

Baronius, the great Catholic historian, adds: 
■'^ Those who were baptized upon their beds were 
-not called Christians, but clinics." (Annals, vol* 
1, p. 208, ed. 1623.) 

Look at what these historians say ; the introduc- 
tion of sprinkling, even for the sick, caused a con- 
troversy that lasted for centuries. It was an 
unheard of thing. It was called a half perfect 
baptism, and the persons thus baptized were not 
called Christians, but clinics. 

4. The clinics were not admitted to sacred or- 
ders. Eusebius quotes Fabius with approbation, 
as follows : " For this illustrious man forsook 
the Church of God, in which when he believed, he 
was judged worthy of the presbyterate through the 
favor of the bishop who ordained him to the pres- 
byterial office. This had been resisted by all the 



156 IMMEESION. 

clergy and many of the laity ; because it was un- 
lawful that one who had been affiised on his bed, 
an account of sickness, as he had been, should en- 
ter into any clerical office; but the bishop re- 
quested that he might be permitted to ordain this 
one only/' (Mc. Fath., vol. 1, p. 289.) 

This establishes the point. 

Was it against the condition of Novatian being 
sick, or against the act of baptism that the objec- 
tion was urged? I answer, against both. 1. 
Against the person sick. The Council of Neo- 
Csesarea, in its twelfth canon, affirms: "He that 
is baptized when he is sick, ought not to be made 
a priest; for his coming to faith is not voluntary, 
but from necessity.^' 2. Against his baptism. 
While Novatian was living Magnus asked Cyp- 
rian, *' Whether they are to be esteemed right 
Christians who are not washed in water but only 
sprinkled?" Cyprian answered, "Necessity com- 
pelling, and God granting his indulgence. '' Vale- 
sius says : " In addition, since baptism properly 
signifies immersion, a pouring of this sort could 
hardly be called a baptism. Wherefore clinics 
were forbidden to be promoted to the rank of the 
presbytery, by the twelfth canon of the Council of 
Neo-Csesarea.'' 

This, then, is the origin of sprinkling. From 



THE BAPTISM OF THE SICK. 157 

this clinic baptism sprinkling has finally prevailed 
in the West among Catholics, with the exception 
of Milan, which still holds to immersion, and 
among Protestants with the exception of the Bap- 
tists. This small beginning has led to great re- 
sults. " It shows how closely we should watch 
innovations, and how earnestly we should hold to 
the practice of the Scriptures. This ordinance of 
•God's house has been changed, and so changed as 
to completely destroy its symbolical import. It 
shows how the spirit that lives and moves in 
human society can override the most sacred ordi- 
nances.^' Or, as Dean Stanley has said in another 
place : " These are the outward forms of which, in 
the Western churches, almost every particular is 
altered, even the most material points. Immer- 
sion has become the exception and not the rule. 
Adult baptism as well as immersion, exists only 
among the Baptists. The dramatic action of the 
scene is lost.^* 



158 IMMEESION. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE HISTORY OF SPRINKLING. 

ITT has already been shown that sprinkling orig- 
inated in the baptism of the sick. This, how- 
ever, was of very doubtful authority and did not 
come into current use. It proved not to be popular^ 
but was an innovation that was most generally 
condemned. Upon the origin of sprinkling for 
baptism the learned Sir David Brewster says : " It 
is impossible to mark the period when sprinkling 
was introduced. It is probable, however, that it 
was invented in Africa, in the second century, in 
favor of clinics. But it was so far from being ap- 
proved of the church in general, that the Africans 
themselves did not count it valid.'' (Edin. Ency.^ 
vol. 3, p. 236.) 

Before the Reformation sprinkling made very^ 
indifferent headway. Now and then it had an ad-^ 
vocate, but it did not prevail. All of the reformers 
recognized immersion as the primitive act of bap- 
tism. They had no hesitation in freely expressing^ 
themselves. Luther, in his work on The Sacrament 
of Baptism, says: '''First, baptism is a Greek 
word. In Latin it can be translated immersion, as. 



THE HISTORY OF SPRINKLING. 159 

when we plunge something into water, that it may- 
be completely covered with water; and although 
that custom has been given up by most persons — 
for they do not wholly submerge the children, but 
only pour on them a little water, yet they ought 
to have been completely immersed and straight- 
way drawn out again." 

Luther voiced the opinion of all of the reform- 
ers, but the popish practice of sprinkling had 
already set in and the tide was too great to be 
resisted. The Greeks, not being under the authority 
of the Pope, would not give way and so practice 
immersion till this day. But in other quarters 
sprinkling became well nigh universal. 

The question then naturally comes up, from 
whence came this sprinkling. That it was a change 
in the original act there can be no doubt. "The 
question now arises,'' says Dr. Schaff, the eminent 
Presbyterian scholar, "when and how came the 
mode of pouring and sprinkling to take the place 
of immersion and emersion, as a rule. The change 
was gradual and confined to the Western churches. 
The Roman Church, as we have seen, backed by 
the authority of Thomas Aquinas, 'the Angelic 
Doctor,' took the lead in the thirteenth century, 
yet so as to retain in her rituals the form of immer- 
sion as the older and better mode. The practice 



160 IMMERSION. 

prevailed over theory, and the exception became 
the rule/' (Teach, p. 51.) 

France appears to have been the first country 
where sprinkling prevailed. That country was 
more completely under the power and spirit of the 
Pope than any other, and it at once accepted the 
doctrine that the Church had a right to change 
any ordinance at its will. Says Dr. Wall : " France 
seems to have been the first country in the world 
where baptism by aiFusion was used ordinarily to 
persons in health, and in the public way of admin- 
istering it. . . . From France it spread (but 
not till a good while after) into Italy, Germany, 
Spain, &c., and last of all into England.^' (Hist. 
In. Bap. vol. 1, p. 576, 577.) 

Sir David Brewster gives such a clear account 
of the origin of sprinkling that I present what he 
says in this connection. Says he : " The first law 
for sprinkling was obtained in the following man- 
ner: Pope Stephen III. being driven from Rome 
by Astulphus, king of the Lombards, in 753, fled 
to Pepin, who, a short time before, had usurped the 
crown of France. Whilst he remained there, the 
Monks of Cressy in Brittany consulted him, whether, 
in a case of necessity, baptism, performed by pour- 
ing water on the head of the infant, would be 
lawful. Stephen replied, that it would. But though 



THE HISTORY OF SPPwINKLING. 161 

the truth of this fact should be allowed, which 
some Catholics deny, yet pouring or sprinkling was 
only admitted in cases of necessity. It was not 
till 1311, that the legislature, in a Council held at 
Ravenna, declared immersion or sprinkling to be 
indifferent/' (Edinburg Ency. vol. 3, p. 236.) 

But it is a remarkable fact that the cold coun- 
tries held on to immersion longer than the warm 
countries. France, a southern country, introduced 
sprinkling; but England, a cold country, held on 
to immersion. It was not until the time of bloody 
Mary that sprinkling was introduced into England. 
Dr. Wall says : " One would have thought that the 
cold countries should have been the first that should 
have changed the custom from dipping to affusion, 
because in cold climates the bathing of the body in 
water may seem much more unnatural and danger- 
ous to the health than in the hot ones (and it is to 
be noted, by the way, that all of those coantries of 
whose rites of baptism, and immersion used in it, 
we have any account in the Scriptures or other an- 
cient history, are in hot climates, where frequent 
and common bathing both of infants and grown per- 
sons is natural, and even necessary to the health). 
But by history it appears that the cold climates 
held the custom of dipping as long as any ; for En- 
gland, which is one of the coldest, was one of the 
11 



162 IMMERSION 

latest that admitted this alteration of the ordinary- 
way." (WalFs Hist. vol. 1, p. 575.) 

As to just how universal dipping was in England 
at this period I will let Dr. Schaff relate : ^^ King 
Edward VI. /' says he, " and Queen Elizabeth were 
immersed. The first Prayer Book of Edward VI. 
(1549), followed the Ofiice of Sarum, directs the 
priest to dip the child in water thrice : ' first, dyp- 
ping the right side; secondly, the left side; the 
third time, dypping the face toward the fonte.' In 
the second Prayer Book (1552) the priest is simply- 
directed to dip the child discreetly and warily ; and 
permission is given, for the first time in Great 
Britain, to substitute pouring if the godfathers and 
godmothers certify that the child is weak. ' During 
the reign of Elizabeth,' says Dr. Wall, ^ many fond 
ladies and gentlewomen first, and then by degrees 
the common people, would obtain the favor of the 
priests to have their children pass for weak chil- 
dren too tender to endure dipping in the water.' 
The same writer traces the practice of sprinkling 
to the period of the Long Parliament and the West- 
minster Assembly. ^ This change in England and 
other Protestant countries from immersion to pour- 
ing, and from pouring to sprinkling, was encour- 
aged by the authority of Calvin, who declared the 
mode to be a matter of no importance ; and by the 



THE HISTOKY OF SPRINKLING. 163 

Westminster Assembly of Divines (1643-1652), 
which decided that pouring and sprinkling are ' not 
only lawful, but also sufficient.^ The Westminster 
Confession declares : ' Dipping of the person into 
the water is not necessary ; but baptism is rightly 
administered by pouring or sprinkling water upon 
the person.^ " (Teach, pp. 51, 52.) 

It was largely through the authority of Calvin 
that sprinkling came into general use in England. 
I am anxious to have these statements historically 
correct, and therefore I give them in the words of 
others. Sir David Brewster, whom I have so often ♦ 
quoted in this chapter, is unquestioned authority. 
His account is as follows : " During the persecu- 
tion of Mary, many persons, most of whom were 
Scotchmen, fled from England to Geneva, and there 
greedily imbibed the opinions of that church. In 
1556 a book was published in that place contain- 
ing ' The Form of Prayer and Ministration of the 
Sacraments, approved by the famous and godly 
learned man, John Calvin,' in which the adminis- 
trator is enjoined to take water in his hand and 
lay it upon the child's forehead. These Scotch ex- 
iles, who had renounced the authority of the Pope, 
implicitly acknowledged the authority of Calvin; 
and returning to their own countr}", with Knox at 
their head, in 1559, established sprinkling in Scot- 



164 IMMERSION. 

land. From Scotland this practice made its way 
into England in the reign of Elizabeth, but was 
not authorized by the established church. In the 
Assembly of Divines, held at Westminster in 1643, 
it was keenly debated whether immersion or sprink- 
ling should be adopted : 25 voted for sprinkling, 
and 24 for immersion ; and even this small major- 
ity was obtained at the earnest request of Dr. 
Lightfoot, who had acquired great influence in 
that Assembly. Sprinkling is therefore the gen- 
eral practice of this country. Many Christians, 
however, especially the Baptists, reject it. The 
Greek Church universally adheres to immersion.'' 
(Edin. Ency. vol. 3, p. 236.) 

The account of this change as given by Dean 
Stanley, the English High-Church Episcopalian, is 
intensely entertaining. He says : " We now pass 
to the changes in the form itself. For the first 
thirteen centuries the almost universal practice of 
baptism was that of which we read in the New 
Testament, and which is the very meaning of the 
word baptize : that those who were baptized were 
plunged, submerged, immersed into the water. 
That practice is still, as we have seen, continued 
in Eastern churches. In the Western Church it 
still lingers among Roman Catholics in the solitary 
instance of the Cathedral of Milan ; amongst Prot- 



THE HISTORY OF SPRINKLING. 165 

estants in the numerous sect of the Baptists. It 
lasted long into the Middle Ages. Even the Ice- 
landers, who at first shrank from the water of their 
freezing lakes, were reconciled when they found 
that they could use the warm water of the Geysers. 
And the cold climate of Russia has not been found 
jxn obstacle to its continuance throughout that vast 
empire. Even in the Church of England it is still 
observed in theory. The Rubric in the public 
baptism for infants enjoins that, unless for special 
causes, they are to be dipped, not sprinkled. Ed- 
ward VI. and Elizabeth were both immersed. But 
since the beginning of the seventeenth century the 
practice has become exceedingly rare. With the 
few exceptions just mentioned, the whole of the 
Western churches have now substituted for the an- 
cient bath the ceremony of letting fall a few drops 
of water on the face.'' (Institutes, pp. 18, 19.) 

These historical statements prove beyond doubt 
that sprinkling is of a popish origin. Where the 
Pope of Rome has not had control, sprinkling has 
never been practiced. This is a notorious fact, and 
is worthy of serious consideration. Dr. Wall, and 
he was a staunch Episcopalian, makes this plain 
enough. Says he : " Sprinkling, for the common 
use of baptizing, was really introduced (in France 
first, and then in the other popish countries) in 



166 IMMEESION. 

times of popery; and that accordingly all those 
countries in which the usurped power of the Pope 
is or has been owned have left off dipping of chil- 
dren in the font ; but that all other countries in the 
world (which have never regarded his authority) do 
still use it ; and that basins, except that in case of 
necessity, were never used by papist or any other 
Christians whatsoever till by themselves.^' (WalPs 
Hist. p. 583.) 

Here are the plainest and most emphatic decla- 
rations of Pedobaptist scholars that immersion was 
changed to sprinkling, and this by the authority 
of Rome. Sprinkling, then, does not come from 
the New Testament, but from the Roman Catholic 
Church. It also teaches the dangerous tendency 
of innovations. Beginning with the affusion of a 
sick man, it has overthrown the entire act as com- 
manded by Christ, and substituted an entirely dif- 
ferent thing in its place. The beauty and sym- 
bolism of the ordinance have been destroyed. As 
for our part, let us abide by the plain teaching of 
God's word, and we are not likely to go astray. 



WHAT THE COUNCILS SAY. J()7 



CHAPTER XXI. 

WHAT THE COUNCILS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC 
CHURCH SAY. 

"TT^ROM early times until now it has been the 
-*~ custom of the Roman Catholic Church to 
call -together councils concerning the welfare of 
that church. Some of those that I shall notice are 
called General Councils, representing the general 
interest of that church ; while others were Provin- 
cial, representing only limited sections. The au- 
thorities I present are unquestioned. Labbe and 
Cossart^s edition of the Councils is a very elabo- 
rate work, and is of indisputable authority. This 
immense work is by two Jesuits, and nothing con- 
trary to Catholic faith is likely to be found in its 
pages. It is in seventeen large Latin volumes, 
and bears date, Paris, 1671. The other references 
are equally authoritative, though not so extensive. 
The acts of the first General Nicene Council, 
A. D. 325, are in favor of immersion. The fol- 
lowing is found in the acts of the Council : " He 
who is baptized descends indeed, obnoxious to sins, 
and held with the corruptions of slavery; but he 
ascends, free from the slavery and sins, a son of 



168 IMMERSION. 

God, heir — ^yea, co-heir — with Christ, having put 
on Christ, as it is written, ^As many of you as 
were baptized into Christ have put on Christ/^' 

In the Council of Carthage, A. D. 348, there 
was a fierce discussion of the subject of baptism. 
Several bishops spoke, and their speeches have 
been preserved. Bishop Gratus said : " I ask this 
sacred assembly to express their opinion whether, 
after a man has descended into the water, and has 
been questioned as to his belief in the Trinity, 
according to the faith of the Gospel and the doc- 
trines of the Apostles, and has made a good con- 
fession concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 
he ought to be again questioned concerning the 
same faith, and again immersed in water ? '' AH 
the bishops answered, " Far be it, far be it." 
(Labbe and Cos. vol. 2, p. 1821.) 

In 633 the Spanish Council known as the Fourth 
Council of Toledo was called by King Sisimand. 
It was composed of the Archbishops of Seville, 
Narbonne, Braga, Merida, Toledo, and Tarragona, 
with fifty-three suffragan bishops, and with seven 
presbyters representing bishops. A change had 
been made from trine to single immersion. Al- 
though this change had been indorsed by the most 
venerable bishops, and by a letter from Pope Gre- 
gory, the people were indignant and much excited. 



WHAT THE COUNCILS SAY. 169 

To calm this excitement and unite the Spanish 
Catholics this Council decreed : " For shunning 
the schism or the use of an heretical practice, we 
observe a single immersion in baptism. Nor do 
they who immerse three times appear to us to ap- 
prove of the claim of heretics, although they follow 
their custom (of trine immersion). And that no 
one may doubt the propriety of this single sacra- 
ment, let him see that it is the death and resurrec- 
tion of Christ shown forth. For the immersion in 
the waters is a descent, as it were, into the grave ; 
and, again, the emersion from the waters is a res- 
urrection. Likewise he may see displayed in it the 
unity of the Deity and the Trinity of persons — the 
unity whilst we immerse once, and the Trinity 
whilst we baptize in the name of the Father, and 
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." (Labbe and 
Cos. vol. 1, pp. 1705, 1706.) The Council first of 
all indorsed the letter of Gregory, which became 
famous, and has been quoted in all controversies 
since, and then passed this decree in favor of sin- 
gle immersion. 

In 787 the Council of Calcuith, in England, sent 
an account of its enactments to Pope Adrian I. by 
Gregory and Theophylact, and, among other things, 
they stated that baptism was to be performed in the 
font on the festivals of Easter and Whitsuntide. 



170 IMMERSION. 

The following are the recommendations of the sec- 
ond canon : " That baptism be performed accord- 
ing to the canons, and not at any other time except 
in cases of emergency; and that all who receive 
children from the holy font, and answer for those 
who can not speak for the renouncing of Satan and 
his works and pomps, and for believing the faith, 
know that they are their sureties unto the Lord 
according to their promise; and when they shall 
have attained to a competent age, let them teach 
the aforesaid Lord's prayer and creed.'' (Hart's 
Eccl. Rec. p. 195.) 

The second council of Calcuith was held in the 
kingdom of Mercia in 816, and was presided over 
by Mulfud, Archbishop of Canterbury. The elev- 
enth canon insists on immersion in these strong 
words : " Let presbyters also know that when they 
administer baptism they ought not to pour the 
consecrated water upon the infants' heads, but let 
them always be immersed in the font; as the Son 
of God himself afforded an example unto all be- 
lievers when he was three times immersed in the 
river Jordan." (Hart's Eccl. Eec. p. 195.) The 
learned Collier said of this canon thafc, " by enjoin- 
ing the priest not to sprinkle the infants in bap- 
tism shows the great regard they had for the prim- 
itive usage of immersion ; that they did not look 



WHAT THE COUNCILS SAY. 171 

upon this as a dangerous rite, or at all impractical 
in these northern climates ; not that they thought 
this circumstance essential to the sacrament, but 
because it was the general practice of the primitive 
church; because it was a lively, instructive em- 
blem of the death, burial, and resurrection of our 
Saviour ; for this reason they preferred it to sprink- 
ling/' (Collier's Eccl. Hist. vol. 1, p. 354.) This is 
a very practical admission, coming as it does from 
the leading historian of the Episcopal Church of 
England. To the fact that this Council decreed 
immersion, and repudiated sprinkling, this histo- 
rian is a very competent witness, but as to the 
reason why this was done we have as much right 
to an opinion as he had. They decreed immersion 
because it was the apostolic rite. 

The Council of Worms, A. D. 868, passed a de- 
cree almost identically like that of the Council of 
Toledo given above, and the reason was the same : 
"While some priests baptized with three immer- 
sions, and the others with but one, a schism was 
raised, endangering the unity of the Church." 
(Can. 5.) - , 

The Council of Tribur, A. D. 895, makes use 
of these strong words : " Trine immersion is an 
imitation of the three days' burial, and the rising 
again out of the water is an image of Christ 



172 IMMERSION. 

rising from the grave." (Labbe and Cos., vol. 9, 
p. 446.) 

The Council of Cashel, under Henry II., A. D. 
1172, was called to secure uniformity between the 
English and Irish churches. Canon 1 reads: 
" That children be brought to the church and be 
baptized there in pure water, with a threefold im- 
mersion; and that this be done by priests, unless 
when there is imminent danger of death, when it 
may be administered by any one without distinc- 
tion of sex or order." (Hart's Eccl. Kec, p. 202.) 

Another Council held at Cashel about the same 
time decreed: "That infants be catechised before 
the doors of the church, and then be baptized in 
the font, in baptismal churches." (Hart's Eccl. 
Rec, p. 202.) 

The Council of York, 1185, also decreed in 
favor of immersion. 

The Westminster General Council, held in Lon- 
don, A. D. 1200, decreed: "If a layman baptize 
a child in case of necessity, let all that follows 
after the immersion, (the chrism, etc.) be per- 
formed by a priest." (Can. 3.) 

The Council of Worcester, 1240, speaks of im- 
mersion in these words: " We enjoin that in every 
church where baptism is performed, there shall be 
a font of stone of sufficient size and depth for the 



WHAT THE COUNCILS SAY. 173 

baptizing of children, and it shall be deeply cov- 
ered, .... such little candidate for baptism 
be thrice immersed." And a further decree : '5>But 
children baptized in case of necessity, if they re- 
cover, must be brought to the church, that those 
things that are wanting may be supplied, namely — 
those things which follow the immersion in bap- 
tism." 

The Council of Clermont, A. D. 1268, consider- 
ing a baptism that had been performed by a layman 
in case of necessity, decreed : " At the font every 
thing which is usually done shall be performed, 
the immersion only excepted, but if it is doubtful 
under what form of words the child has been bap- 
tized, then let the priest baptize him; but while 
he immerses him, let him say, "If thou art not 
already baptized, I baptize thee in the name of the 
Father," etc. 

The Council of Reading, 1279, decreed that the 
children should be baptized only at Easter and 
Pentecost, cases of necessity excepted ; and that in 
the meantime they should be instructed, "so that 
immersion alone remains to be performed on the 
day of baptism." (Can. 4.) 

The Council of Oxford, 1222, decreed: "Let 
not above three persons be admitted to raise the 



174 



IMMERSION. 



child from the holy font.'' (Hart's Eccl. Rec, 
p. 205.) 

The Council of Cologne, in 1280, decreed: "That 
he who baptizes, when he immerses the candidate 
in water, shall neither add to the words, or take 
from them, or change them." 

The Council of Nismes, 1284, decreed that: 
'^The baptizer shall thrice immerse the infant in 
water, but if one immersion have been performed, 
the child will nevertheless be baptized." (Labbe 
and Cos., vol. 11, p. 1199.) 

The Council of Ravenna, 1311, decreed: "Bap- 
tism is to be administered by trine aspersion or 
immersion." (Labbe and Cos., vol. 11, B. 2, 
p. 1586.) 

This is the first time in history that sprinkling 
or immersion were made indifferent. It is well to 
say that this Council only represented one pro- 
vince. Soon after this sprinkling became cus- 
tomary in France, but immersion prevailed in 
England until the seventeenth century. 

In 1355, the Council of Prague decreed : " Let 
the presbyters take heed lest any negligence be 
committed, either in putting together or in the 
expression of the proper form of words, as well as 
in the immersion in water with which the whole 
value of baptism is connected. As to the form. 



WHAT THE COUNCILS SAY. 175 

let the immersion be trine, in this manner — that at 
once, when the administrator begins to utter the 
prescribed form, he does that which is first and 
that which is last when he finishes." 

From this time sprinkling rapidly prevailed in 
the Catholic Church, and has become universal 
with them except in the church at Milan. 



176 IMMERSION. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE TESTIMONY OF LITURGIES AND RITUALS. 

"F RARELY, if ever, heard the Liturgies and 
■^ Missals referred to in an argument upon the 
action of baptism, and yet I consider that they 
give very strong testimony in favor of immersion. 
The Roman Catholic Martini says: "In all of 
the pontificals and rituals I have seen, and I 
have seen many, ancient as well as more recent, 
immersion is prescribed. I must except, how- 
ever, the ritual of the church of Madeleine de 
Beaulieu, the age of which does not exceed three 
hundred years, in which the priest is directed to 
pour water on the head of the infant.'^ A ritual 
is of more weight than the testimony of any indi- 
vidual could be ; for it represents the opinion and 
practice of a church, or of many churches, while 
an individual only expresses his own sentiments. 
I here present a number of these rituals : 

The Gothic Missal, a very old manuscript, has 
the following prayer in the baptismal benediction : 
" We pray our Lord God that he will sanctify 
this font, so that all who will descend into this. 



TESTIMONY OF LITURGIES, ETC. 177 

font may receive through the washing of the 
blessed laver, the remission of their sins." 

The Syrian Ritual, as used by the Nestorians, 
appears to be decisive : " They bring them to tlie 
priest, who, standing on the western side of the 
baptistery, turns the <)hild's face to the east, and 
immerses him in water, putting his hand on his 
head, and saying, such a one is baptized in the 
name of the Father, etc." (Badger's Nestorians 
and their Ritual, vol. 2, pp. 207, 208.) 

The Baptismal Liturgy, which formed a part of 
the Sacramentary of Pope Gelasius, A. D. 492, 
and which was taken by Cardinal Thomasins, 
1748, from a codex manuscript, more than a 
thousand years old, reads thus : " Then immerse 
three times in water." 

Remingius, who baptized King Clovis, in a 

ritual taken from a very old manuscript, says : 

^^The presbyters or the deacons, or, if need be, 

acolythis, having put on their robes, proceed to 

the font, and enter into the water, and receive 

therefrom their parents, baptize, first the males, 

and then the females, by trine immersion, with but 

one invocation of the Holy Trinity, saying: I 

baptize thee into the name of the Father, and 

dips once, and of the Son, and dips again, and of 

Holy Ghost, and dips the third time.'' 
12 



178 IMMERSION. 

An ancient ritual found in a manuscript codex 
of the Monastery of Glogan, in the diocese of 
Cologne, says: "The presbyter receiving the 
infant from its parents, asking its name, first bap- 
tizes the males, and then the females, by trine 
immersion, saying: I baptize thee in the name, 
etc/' 

The Ordo Romanus, a Ritual of the eighth cen- 
tury, has : " I baptize thee in the name of the 
Father, (and immerses once,) and of the Son, (and 
immerses the second time,) and of the Holy Ghost, 
(and immerses the third time)." 

The Manual of Sarum, drawn up about 1085, 
by Osmond, Bishop of Salisbury and Chancellor 
of England, and adopted by nearly all of England, 
Wales and Ireland, and continued in use till Ed- 
ward the YI., has: "The priest shall take the 
child into his hands, and asking his name, bap- 
tize him by trine immersion, thus calling on the 
name of the Trinity, he shall say: N., I bap- 
tize thee in the name of the Father, and dips him 
once, etc." 

This manual was regarded as very great au- 
thority. Wall quotes it and says : " The offices 
or liturgies for public baptism in the Church of 
England did all along, so far as I can learn, enjoin 
dipping, without any mention of pouring or sprink- 



TESTIMONY OF LITURGIES, ETC. 179 

ling. And John Frith, writing in the year 1533, 
a treatise on baptism, calls the outward part of it, 
the plunging down into the water, and lifting up 
again, which he often mentions, without ever 
mentioning pouring or sprinkling." (WalPs Hist. 
Int. Bap. vol. 1, p. 579.) And Wheatly, writing 
on the Book of Common Prayer, in 1885, says : 
" The Salisbury Missal, printed in 1530, (the last 
that was in force before the Reformation,) expressly 
requires and orders dipping." (p. 350.) 

In a ritual formerly belonging to the church at 
Ravenna, a manuscript of the twelfth century, and 
until lately in possession of Jos. Baptista Martini,, 
but now in the library of the University of the 
city of Bologna, we find : " Then taking him, (the- 
candidate) he baptized him, with trine immersion,, 
saying, Wilt thou be baptized? Answer, I will, 
three times. And I baptize thee in the name of 
the Father, and dips him once, etc." 

Guillaume Durant, Bishop of Mendefurn, 1286- 
1296, prescribed a ritual for his clergy, in whick 
the following passage occurs: '^ That he who bap- 
tizes, after giving a name to the child, and made 
the sign of the cross upon the water, must plunge 
the infant three times, .... he shall im- 
merse the child." 

M. De Moleon alludes to an ancient ritual of 



180 IMMERSION. 

the year 1581, which prescribes immersion: *^The 
presbyter shall say to the boy, I baptize thee into 
the name of the Father, immerse once, etc." 

The first prayer book of Edward VI. reads: 
^' First, dipping the right side; secondly, the left 
side; third time dipping the face toward the 
font.'^ The second prayer book of Edward, 1551, 
the first book of Queen Elizabeth, 1559, and that 
of King James, in 1604, all read: "The priest 
shall dip him in the water, discreetly and warily ; 
but if they certify that the child is weak, it shall 
suffice to pour water upon it.'^ This book of Ed- 
-ward is the- first authentic permission for altering 
the act of baptism in Great Britain, yet Dean 
Stanley asserts that " Edward the YI. and Elizabeth 
were both immersed." (Christian Institutions, p. 18.) 

The Saxon Visitation Articles, 1592, Art. iii, 
says: ''That there is but one baptism, and one 
ablution : not that which is used to take away the 
filth of the body, but that which washes us from 
our sins. By baptism, as the bath of regenera- 
tion and renovation of the Holy Ghost, God saves 
us, and works in us such justice and purgation 
from our sins, etc." (Schaff' s Creeds of Christen- 
dom, vol. 3, p. 184.) 

The order of the Sacraments, prepared by Pope 
Xjregory I., in 1776, has: "Let the priest bap- 



181 

tize with a trine immersion, once only invoking 
the Trinity."' 

The Methodist Discipline, so late as 1846, as- 
serted that Christ was baptized "in the river of 
Jordan, '^ and that " buried in baptism '' alludes 
to water baptism. 

The present Ritual of the Greek Church reads : 
" And when the whole body is anointed, the 
priest immerses him, holding him erect, and look- 
ing toward the east, saying, the servant of the 
God is immersed, in the name of the Father, and 
of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; now and ever, 
and to ages of ages, amen. At each invocation, 
bringing him down, and bringing him up. And 
after the immersing, the priest washes his hands, 
singing with the people: Happy they, whose sins 
are forgiven, etc.'' 

I only ask that you shall weigh the evidence 
here submitted. These rituals represent, or have 
represented, much of the faith and practice of the 
world. 



182 IMMERSION. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

WHAT THE POETS SAY. 

TZ)AUL, in the sermon which he delivered at 
-^ Athens, thought it legitimate to appeal to 
their own poets. I will also refer to this class 
of writers. I have long observed that all of the 
principal poets have favored immersion as the rite 
of Christian baptism, but for some reason they are 
not often quoted. The evidence I introduce is of 
two kinds : 1st, a direct statement to this effect ; 
and, 2nd, an illustration of the classical use of the 
word. I will give what several of the poets have 
to say on the subject. 

Dante, A. D. 1300, in his vision of hell, describes 
some apertures in the rocks of torment, of the same 
dimensions as the fonts of St. John the Baptist at 
Florence : 

" I saw the livid stone throughout the sides, 
And its bottom full of apertures, 
All equal in their width, and circular each ; 
Nor ample less nor larger they appear'd 
Than in Saint John's fair dome of me belov'd, 
Those fram'd to hold the pure baptismal streams. 
One of the which I brake, some few years past, 
To save a whelming infant ; and be this 
A seal to undeceive whoever doubts 



WHAT THE POETS SAY. 183 

The motive of ray deed. From out the mouth 
Of every one emerg'd a sinner's feet, 
And of the legs high upward as the calf ; 
The rest beneath was hid." 

There is a passage in Dante that throws light on 
the much quoted words of Polybius : " The foot- 
soldiers were baptized as far as the breast." Lately 
some have contended that immerse was not a proper 
rendering of baptize in this passage. The poet says 
of some of the lost in hell : 

" In the pit they stand immers'd, 
Each from his navel downward." 

The bard believed in baptismal salvation by 

immersion, and hence he makes Beatrice exhort 

Christians : 

" Be ye more staid, 
Christians; not, like feather, by each wind 
Removable ; nor think to cleanse yourselves 
In every water." 

He says of himself: 

" I return'd 
From the most holy wave, regenerate, 
E'en as new plants renew'd with foliage new, 
Pure and made apt for mounting the stars." 

The Vision of Pierce Plowman^ of the fourteenth 

century, has the following : 

*' Trojanus was a true knight, and toke never Christendom, 
And he is safe, sayeth the boke, and his soule in heaven; 
For there is fulling in fonte, and fulling in blud sheding. 
And through fire is fullynge, that is firm believe." 



184 IMMERSION. 

This style of writing was common before the 
Reformation. Baptism is here called fulled, which 
was performed in a baptistery, and of course by 
immersion. The following is from the same work : 

" Quod he, 
May no medicine on mold the man to heal br5'nge, 
Neither faith ne sine hope, so festered he hys wounds, 
Wythout the bloud of a barne bore of a mayden, 
And he bathed in that blood baptized as it were 
Than plastered with penance, and passion of that baby, 
He should stand and step, and stalworth he never 
Till he have eaten all the barne, and his bloud drunken." 

The celebrated Lodovico Ariosto, who composed 
his Orlando Furioso A. D. 1504, understood bap- 
tism as a dipping. Of one of his heroes he says : 

" On the portentious bridge he meant to meet 
Whatever champion dar'd the pass to try, 
And send the warrior and his steed to fleet 
Down the deep flood that swept his castle by. 

His falling foe the Algerine compell'd 

To quaflf at large the cool and temp'rate flood, 

For that Circean draught that late impell'd 

His cruel hand to shed a virgin's blood, 

As if that baptismal rite could ease his inward load. 

Fool, to suppose that the surge could wash away 

The bloody orgies of the venom'd bowl ; 

Yet many a knight who fought the dubious fray 

"By turns were sent adown the flood to roll." 

Pollok, in speaking of the loss of freedom, says 
of some who defended slavery : 



WHAT THE POETS SAY. 185 

" Of Christian parentage descended, too, 
And dipped in the baptismal font, as sign 
Of dedication to the Prince who bowed 
To death, to set the sin-bound prisoner free." 

• 

The pious Isaac Watts sings : 

" Do we not know that solemn word, 
That we are buried with the Lord ? 
Baptized into his death, and then 
Put off the body of our sin." 

Cowper in his Task says of Philosophy : 

" Philosophy baptiz'd 
In the pure fountain of eternal love, 
Has eyes indeed." 

And who has not sung the words of this poet : 

" There is a fountain filled with blood 
Drawn from Immanuel's veins ; 
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, 
Lose all their guilty stains." 

This plunging in the blood of Christ has a fit 
emblem in buried with Christ in baptism. 

The classical expression " baptized in sleep '^ is 
well explained by Cowper: 

" Immersed in soft repose ambrosial." 

Virgil sings of the Greeks taking Troy: 
" They invade the city buried in sleep and wine." 

Pope in his Odyssey translates the root of bap- 
tize to plunge. When the eyes of Polyphemus are 



186 IMMERSION. 

bored out with a red-hot iron, he compares it with 

a smith tempering his steel : 

"As when armourers temper in the ford 
The keen edge pole-axe, or the shining sword, * 
The red-hot metal hisses in the lake, 
Thus in the eye-ball hissed the plunging stake." 

Pope thus relates the death of one of Homer's 
heroes : 

" Plunged in his throat the smoking weapon lies." 

Mr. Dryden likewise expresses the poet's sense 

thus in the ^neid : 

" Thus having said, her smould'ring torch unpress'd. 
With her full force she plunged into his breast." 

Aratus, describing the setting of the constel- 
lation Cepheus in latitude sixty-nine or seventy 
degrees, calls it baptizing or plunging his upper 
parts into the sea ; and, " also if the sun baptizes 
himself without a cloud into the western sea." 
These expressions are often found in the poets. 
Virgil, as translated by Dryden, in speaking of 
the Greater and Lesser Bears, says they — 

" By fate's decree 
Abhor to dive beneath the northern sea." 

Homer tells of a hero who was — 

" Like the red star that fires the autumnal skies, 
When fresh he rears his radiant orb to sight, 
And bath'd in ocean shoots a keener light." 



WHAT THE POETS SAY. 187 

And Bickersteth says : 

" The sun, 
Who climbing the meridian steep of heaven, 
Shone with a monarch's glory, till he dipp'd 
His footsteps in the ruddy western waves." 

And again : 

" It was golden eventide. The sun 
Was sinking through the roseate clouds to rest 
Beneath the western waves." 

Bickersteth in that beautiful poem, "Yesterday, 

To-day, and Forever," speaks thus of the work of 

the Baptist: 

" Jerusalem 
Hurried to Jordan. ' Ah, what deeds of wrong 
Lips, counted by their fellows as pure as babes, 
Flung then upon startled winds ! What filth 
Was wash'd away from penitential hearts 
In that baptismal stream.' " 

Of the baptism of Jesus he says : 

" John, abash'd. 
Shrank from the suit he urged. But he refused 
Refusal. And, as from' the shallow ford 
Returning, on the bank he knelt in prayer." 

The poet also throws light on the much disputed 

passage, Rev. xix : 13 : " And he was clothed in a 

vesture dipped in blood." He says : 

"Who knows not 
The loves of David and young Jonathan, 
When in unwitting rivalry of hearts 
The son of Jesse won a nobler wreath 
Than garlands pluck'd in war and dipp'd in blood." 



188 IMMERSION. 

In another passage he expressly refers to this 

passage : 

" The Lord of hosts, 
Apparell'd in a vesture dipp'd in blood." 

John the Baptist said that Christ, when he came, 
would baptize the wicked in the fires of hell. Bick- 
ersteth in the " Millennial Sabbath " catches the 
spirit of this when he describes how God utterly 
ruined some of the fallen angels : 

"He hurled them down 
Like meteors through the lurid vault, and fix'd 
Their adamantine fetters to a rock 
Of adamant, submerged, not consumed, 
Beneath the lake of fire." 

And the wicked sank — 

" Still down, still ever down, from deep to deep, 
Into the outer darkness, till at last 
The fiery gulf received them, and they plunged 
Beneath Gehennah's sulphureous waves 

. In the abyss of ever enduring woe." 

This poet also gives us a significant exposition 
of the " baptism of suffering " : 

"The Sun 
Of Righteousness, with healing in his wings, 
Has risen upon a world weary of night : 
Most glorious, when emergent from the flood 
That from far Lebanon to Kadesh roll'd 
Its waves of fire baptismal, Zion rose 
In perfect beauty." 



WHAT THE POETS SAY. 189 

Moore, ever popular with many, adds his testi- 
mony. Julian, in his ode to Cupid, says he caught 
the boy, baptized him in wine, and drank him. 
Moore thus sings of this event : 

" I caught him by his downy wing, 
And whelm'd him in the racy spring ; 
Ah, then I drank the poison'd bowl, 
And love now nestles in ray soul." 

The classic " baptized in wine " is explained by 
Moore. He says of wine, personified as Bacchus, 

that— 

" To my inmost love he glides, 
And bathes it with his ruby tides." 

I now refer to the immortal Milton. The Arch- 
angel Michael is explaining to Adam the plan of 
salvation, and finally tells him of the great com- 
mission, when he says : 

" Them who shall believe, 
Baptizing in the profluent stream, the sign 
Of washing them from guilt of sin to life 
Pure, and in mind prepar'd, if so befall, 
For death, like that which the Redeemer died." 

The last quotation is from Paradise Lost; this 
one is from Paradise Regained. Satan sees the 
thousands coming to the baptism of John, and in 
alarm he speaks of Christ to his hosts : 

" Before Him a great prophet, to proclaim 
His coming, is sent Harbinger, who all 



190 IMMERSION. 

Invites, and in the consecrated stream 
Pretends to wash off sin, and fit them so 
Purified to receive Him pure, or rather 
To do Him honor as their king ; all come, 
And he himself among them was baptized ; 
Not thence to be more pure, but to receive 
The testimony of heaven, that who He is 
Thenceforth the nations may not doubt. I saw 
The prophet do him reverence, on Him rising 
Out of the water, heaven above the clouds 
Unfold her crystal doors, thence on His head 
A perfect dove descends, whate'er it meant." 

Christ, while meditating in the wilderness, speaks 
of this transaction : 

(The Baptist)— "first 
Refused on me his baptism to confer. 
As much his greater, and was hardly won ; 
But as I rose out of the laving stream 
Heaven open'ed her eternal doors." 

Among the Greeks hapto was used with the sig- 
nification "to dye,'^ because dyeing was done by 
dipping. So Milton has used it in his beautiful 
description of the angel Raphael : 

*' The middle pair of his wings 
Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round 
Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold 
And colors dipped in heaven." 

Bickersteth has the same idea: 

" The stones 
Of purest crystal are from gloomiest mines ; 
The tenderest pearls are won from roughest seas ; 



WHAT THE POETS SAY. 191 

And stars of colors dipp'd in Iris' vats 
Beam from unfathomable distances 
Ere they disclose their radiance." 

I might add other names and extracts, but these 
are sufficient. 



192 IMMERSION. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

WHAT THE GKEEK CHUKCH SAYS. 

~T HAVE shown in former chapters that baptizo 
in classic Greek, in the Septuagint, in the New 
Testament, and in the Greek fathers, means to dip. 
The Greek Church practices dipping to-day, and 
has never held to any other form of baptism. I 
present the practice of the Greek Church as an 
unanswerable argument in faver of immersion. 
We will consider: 

1. Ancient and modern Greek is substantially 
the same language in structure and in words. In 
twenty-five hundred years there has been but little 
variation in this language. This point alone is 
enough to put the whole baptismal controversy at 
rest. 

Upon the harmony of ancient and modern Greek 
I give the testimony of two among the foremost 
teachers of Greek in this country, and w^hat they 
state is confirmed by scholars in Germany, England 
and America. 

Prof. A. F. Fleet, LL. D., for many years pro- 
fessor of Greek in the State University of Missouri, 



WHAT THE GREEK CHURCH SAYS. 193 

and who spent much time in Athens in the study 
of this language, writes me : 

Mexico, Mo., Jan. 26th, 1891. 
Rev. J. T. Christian, Jackson^ Miss, : 

Dear Sir, — In answer to yours of the 17th inst., 
I would say that the modern Greek language is 
substantially the same in structure and in words 
as that spoken and written by the ancient Greeks. 
As I have frequently said in public and in private, 
Socrates and Plato, Xenophon and Demosthenes, 
and even Homer himself, might to-day sit at the 
foot of the Acropolis and read the morning paper 
published in Athens with comparatively little dif- 
ficulty. There has been less change in the Greek 
language within the past 2,300 years than in the 
English within the past 500. 

With regards, I am, very truly, 

A. F. Fleet. 

Prof Addison Hogue, Professor of Greek in the 
University of Mississippi, and author of a learned 
work on Attic Prose, writes: 

Oxford, Miss., Jan. 21st, 1891. 

Kev. J. T. Christian, D. D. : 

My Dear Sir, — Yours of the 17th is post marked 

the 20th, and was received by me this morning, 
13 



194 IMMERSION. 

which will explain what might seem a tardiness in 
replying. 

My answer is, modern Greek is substantially the 
same as the old Greek: it is far more like the 
Greek of 2,200 years ago than modern English is 
like the English of 500 years ago. English has 
taken in numerous words from outside languages; 
modern Greek has naturally a great many Turkish 
words; and the language as spoken among the 
uneducated people, and the colloquial Romaic, has 

departed very widely from the old classical stand- 
ard. But the written language is amazingly like 
what Greek used to be. A modern Greek news- 
paper is easy to read, provided one can read an- 
cient Greek with ease. Children's school books 
show the same similarity; and the foreign words 
of which I spoke are by no means so numerous as 
might be supposed. 

If Xenophon were handed in the "Islands of the 
Blessed," the paper I send you, it would give him 
the least trouble in the world to read it, though he 
would naturally wonder who had been tampering 
with his good old Greek. You may use this as 
you like. 

Command me further if I can be of service. 
Yours, very truly, Addison Hogue. 



WHAT THE GREEK CHURCH SAYS. 196 

Having sufficiently emphasized the fact that 
ancient and modern Greek is the same language, I 
now pass to the proof that the Greek Church now 
practices immersion. 

2. The use of the language. I mean by use 
the common, every-day acceptation of words. The 
word baptize is in constant use among the Greeks. 
A modern Greek writer on natural philosophy 
repeatedly employs the word. In explaining the 
method of determining specific gravity, he says we 
first weigh the body, then immerse it in water, and 
then weigh it, thus suspended by a cord. The 
Minerva, an Athenian newspaper, in explaining the 
explosive gun-cotton which caused such a noise in 
the world thirty years ago, says: "Common cot-- 
ton, well cleansed, is taken, which, being immersed 
(baptizemenou) for about half a minute in strong 
nitric acid, &c." Cereas, the most learned of 
modern Greek writers, says : " Righteousness for- 
bids a man to dip, (baptize in) his pen in the filth 
of flattery." The Age, another Athenian newspaper, 
sa3's : " The Papists verily believe that they are 
being saved by sprinkling (rantizomenoi), and not 
by being baptized (baptizomenoi).'' 

3. The ritual and catechism of the Greek 
Church. The best way to tell what a church 
j)ractices, is to study their ritual and catechism ; 



196 IMMEESION. 

and I propose to let the ritual and catecliism of 
the Greek Church speak for itself: *^ The servant 
(handmaid) of God, N., is baptized in the name of 
the Father, amen; and of the Son, amen; and of 
the holy Ghost, amen ; now and ever, and to ages 
of ages. At each invocation he immerses the can- 
didate and raises him again." (Offic. Orien. Ch. 
p. 94.) And hence the Kussian catechism reads: 
"This they hold to be a point necessary, that no 
part of the child be undipped in water." 

4. The Lexicons. Prof. Sophocles, a native 
Greek, who long ably filled the chair of Greek in 
Harvard University, published a lexicon of the 
Roman and Byzantine periods, "extending from 
B. C. 140 to A. D. 1100." He defines baptize " to 
dip, to immerse, to sink." On the New Testa- 
ment meaning of the word, he remarks : " There 
is no evidence that Luke and Paul, and other 
writers of the New Testament, put upon this verb 
meanings not recognized by the Greeks." 

In a French and Greek lexicon, published in 
Athens, in 1842, the French word immerse is de- 
fined by three Greek words, embapsis, baptisiSy 
katadusis, " dip in, dip, sink under." 

In an English-Greek lexicon, published in Cer- 
fee, in 1827, the word " immerge " is translated by 

■■■Ha-- ■ '■ 



WHAT THE GREEK CHURCH SAYS. 197 

"baptize/' This was done by a zealous defender 
of infant sprinkling. 

5. The testimony of native Greeks. The Greeks 
certainly ought to know what their own language 
teaches, and has always taught. They are unani- 
mous in their verdict, that baptize means to 
immerse. I will give the testimony of a few dis- 
tinguished Greeks: 

The Bishop of Cyclades says : " The word bap- 
tize, explained, means a veritable dipping, and, in 
fact, a perfect dipping. An object is baptized 
when it is completely covered. This is a proper 
explanation of the word baptizoJ' 

Bishop Platon, of Moscow, Pres. State of Greek 
Ch., Edinburg, 1814, says: "The Greeks and 
Russians always use the trine immersion." 

Alex, de Stourdza, Russian State Counselor, 
says : " The Church of the West has, then, de- 
parted from the example of Jesus Christ; and 
has obliterated the whole sublimity of the ex- 
terior sign; in short, she commits an awful 
abuse of words and of ideas in practicing bap- 
tism by aspersion, the very term being, in itself, 
a derisive contradiction. The verb baptize, im- 
mergo, has, in fact, but one sole acceptation. It 
signifies, literally and always, to plunge. Baptism 
and immersion are, therefore, identical, and to say 



198 IMMERSION. 

baptism by aspersion is as if one should say, im- 
mersion by aspersion, or any other absurdity of the 
same nature." (Con. sur LaDoc. et U Esprit, p. 87.) 

Prof. Timayenis, a native Greek of the Hellenic 
Institute, N. Y., in a lecture at Chautauqua, in 
1881, speaking of the Greek religion, said: "The 
Greeks baptize, of course — they baptize in the real 
way. The Greek word baptizo means nothing but 
immerse in the water. Baptism means nothing but 
immersion. In the Greek language we have a 
different word for sprinkling. When you put a 
piece of wood into the water, and cover it entirely, 
you baptize, you do what is expressed by the 
Greek word baptizo. I am ready to discuss this 
with any divine about the Greek word. Sprinkling 
is not what the Bible teaches; that is a fact that 
you may depend on. ^' 

The Rev. Nicholas Bjerring, of New York, 
in his Offices of the Oriental Church, 1884, re- 
marks: ^^ Baptism is celebrated sometimes in the 
church and sometimes in private houses, as need 
may be. It is always administered by dipping the 
infent, or adult, three times into the water.'' 
(p. 13.) 

Prof. N. Bonwetsch, of Dorpat University, 
writes me under date of May 5th, 1890: "As far 
as the ceremony of the Greek-Russian Church is 



WHAT THE GREEK CHURCH SAYS. 199 

concerned, immersion is the only method used in 
baptizing/' 

Dr. A. Diomedes Kyriasko, of the University 
of Athens, Greece, writes to Rev. C. G. Jones, of 
Lynchburg, Va., as follows: 

Athens, Aug., 1890. 

Dear Sir, — The verb baptizo, in the Greek lan- 
guage, never has the meaning of to pour or to 
sprinkle, but invariably that of to dip. In the 
Greek Church, both in its earliest times and in our 
days, to baptize has meant to dip. It is through 
this process that our church baptizes, and always 
has baptized both infants belonging to Christian 
families and adults turning from any other religion 
to Christianity, i. e., by dipping them thrice in the 
water. Thus also meaning by dipping, used by the 
Apostles, to baptize. Were it not so Paul could 
not have compared baptizing to the death of 
Christ, saying that in baptism we are buried with 
Christ, and arisen with him; that is to say, the 
old man in us has been buried, and the new man 
fashioned according to the likeness of Christ risen 
again. Since baptism, therefore, by the cleansing 
of the soul, this idea can only be clearly represented 
by the entire dipping of the body into water, and 
not by sprinkling or pouring. Yours truly, 

Dr. a. Diomedes Kyriasko, Professor. 



200 IMMERSION. 

6. Scholars of other communions fully confirm 
the Greeks in this testimony. Dr. W. D. Powell, 
who has just returned from Athens, says in the 
Western Recorder , under date of January 8th, 
1891: "One of the Professors (in the University 
of Athens) brought two Greek and English Lexi- 
cons, one I remember was by Dr. Sophocles, who 
was a Professor in Harvard University for twenty- 
eight years, and both lexicons rendered the word 
to dip, to plunge, to immerse. 

" I asked the Professors what the word baptizo 
meant in Latin, and they replied, ^ submergere.^ 
I enquired furthermore what it meant in Spanish, 
and they said 'immersion.' 

" An intelligent Greek said : ' Don't ask me, 
ask any common laborer you meet on the street 
and he will tell you.' So when I returned to the 
hotel I requested the head -waiter, who was a 
Frenchman, to ask the porter what the word bap- 
tizo meant. He replied, that it meant 'to put 
under the water and to take out of the water.'*' 

The Episcopalians bear witness to the fact that 
the Greek Church immerses. Two witnesses are 
sufficient. 

Dean Stanley wrote a book upon the Eastern 
Church, and in it he says : " There can be no 
question that the original form of baptism — the 



WHAT THE GKEEK CHURCH SAYS. 201 

very meaning of the word — was complete immer- 
sion in the deep baptismal waters ; and that, for at 
least four centuries, any other form was either un- 
known, or regarded in the case of dangerous ill- 
ness, as an exceptional, almost a monstrous case. 
To this form the Eastern Church still rigidly ad- 
heres ; and the most illustrious and venerable por- 
tion of it, that of the Byzantine Empire, absolutely 
repudiates and ignores any other mode of adminis- 
tration as essentially invalid." (East. Ch., p. 117.) 
Dr. Wall says: "The Greek Church, in all 
branches of it, does still use immersion ; and they 
hardly count a child, except in case of sickness 
well baptized without it. And so do all other 
Christians in the world, except the Latins." (Hist. 
Inft. Bap., vol. 1, p. 589.) 

The Presbyterians give their testimony : 
Dr. Schaff says : " The Oriental and the Or- 
thodox Russian churches require even a three- 
fold immersion, in the name of the trinity, and 
deny the validity of any other. They look upon 
the Pope of Rome as an unbaptized heretic, and 
would not recognize the single immersion of the 
Baptists. The Longer Russian Catechism thus 
defines baptism : ^ A sacrament in which a man 
who believes, having his body thrice plunged in 
water^ in the name of God. the Father, the Sor, 



202 IMMERSION. 

and the Holy Ghost, to a life spiritual and holy.' 
Marriott, (in Smith and Cheatham, i: 161) says: 
^ Triple immersion, that is thrice dipping the 
head whilst standing in the water, was the all but 
universal rule of the church in early times.' ^' 
(Hist. Ch. Church, vol. 1, p. 468, note.) 

Prof. Moses Stuart, of Andover, says : " The 
mode of baptism by immersion, the Oriental Church 
has always continued to preserve, even down to the 
present time. The members of this church are 
accustomed to call the members of the Western 
churches, sprinkled Christians, by way of ridicule 
and contempt.'' (On Bapt., p. 151.) 

The Methodists join in proving the same thing. 

Dr. Bennett, whose work is edited and endorsed 
by Bishop Hurst and Dr. Crooks, says: '^The 
Greek Church adheres to trine immersion with 
great tenacity, and to-day practices this mode in 
all its chief churches." (Arch. p. 408.) 

Prof Bonet-Maurey, of the Theological Fac- 
ulty, Paris, France, writes me: "Baptism by 
immersion is still practiced by all the different 
orthodox Greek churches of the East." 

I could add many other learned witnesses, but 
these are sufficient. They include some of the 
brightest lights of Europe and America. Here is 
the testimony of the Greek Church as given by 



WHAT THE GREEK CHURCH SAYS. 203 

itself, and its representative men; and the most 
scholarly Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Meth- 
odists confirm this view. Some of these men have 
only recently investigated this subject and give us 
overwhelming facts. Here is a church that speaks 
the language that the New Testament was written 
in, a people that have the very words that Christ 
selected to designate the ordinance of baptism, in 
constant use. Above all, they have practiced im- 
mersion since the days of Christ. This proof to a 
candid mind is unanswerable. 



204 IMMERSION. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

WHAT THE CATHOLICS SAY. 

rpHOMAS AQUINAS, the great Catholic Di- 
vine of the Middle Ages, who died 1274, ap- 
pears to have been the first person in the Catholic 
Church who took the ground that affusion under 
ordinary circumstances would answer for baptism. 
Yet he did not think it so good as immersion. He 
also said that " by immersion the burial with Christ 
is more vividly represented ; therefore, this is the 
more common and commendable way.'' He also 
declares it to be safer. His contemporary, Bona- 
ventura, says that '^the way of dipping into water 
is the more common, and the fitter and the safer.'' 
This opinion favoring sprinkling, however, was not 
endorsed by any Council or Pope. It was not till 
the Council of Ravenna that sprinkling was de- 
clared to be indifferent. This was the first official 
action of the Catholic Church. 

The foremost Catholic scholars have no hesita- 
tion in declaring that the Scripture act of baptism 
was by immersion. I give the testimony of some 
unimpeachable witnesses. 

Dr. Dollingerj of Bonn University, who recently 



WHAT THE CATHOLICS SAY. 205 

died at a ripe old age, says: "At first Christian 
baptism commonly took place in the Jordan ; of 
course, as the church spread more widely, also in 
private houses. Like that of St. John, it was by 
immersion of the whole person, which is the only 
meaning of the New Testament word. A mere 
pouring or sprinkling was never thought of." 
(First Age of Christ and Ch. p. 318.) He also 
says in his Church History, vol. 2, p. 294 : " Bap- 
tism was administered by an entire immersion in 
water." 

Arnold! says: ^^Baptizeiuj to immerse, to sub- 
merge. It was as being an entire submersion 
under the water, since washings were already a 
confession of impurity and a symbol of purifica- 
tion — the confession of entire impurity and a 
symbol of entire purification." (Com. on Math, 
iii : 6.) 

Dupin says : " They plunged those three times 
in the water when they baptized." (Hist. vol. 2, 
p. 77, 3d century.) 

Paul Maria Paciandi, the great antiquarian, 
wrote a most learned book, which he dedicated to 
Pope Benedict XIV., and it was published by 
the authority of the Pope. He says of the repre- 
sentations of pouring on the head of the Savior, 
in the picture at Ravenna, that "Nothing can be 



206 IMMERSION. 

more preposterous than these emblems. Was our 
Lord baptized by aspersion? This is so far from 
being true, that nothing can be more opposite to 
the truth, and it is to be attributed to the igno- 
rance and rashness of workmen." 

Dr. Joseph De Vicecomes, of Milan, says : " I 
will never cease to profess and teach that only im- 
mersion in water, except in cases of necessity, is 
lawful baptism in the church. I will refute that 
false notion that baptism was administered in the 
primitive church by pouring or sprinkling." (Ch. 
6, Bk. 4.) 

John Mabillon says that pouring " Was contrary 
to an express canon of the ninth century ; contrary 
to the canon given by Stephen, which allowed 
pouring only in cases of necessity ; contrary to the 
general practice in France, where trine immersion 
was used ; contrary to the practice of the Spaniards, 
who used single immersion; contrary to the opinion 
of Alwin, who contended for trine immersion ; and 
contrary to the practice of many who continued to 
dip until the fifteenth century." (Acta Sane. Ord. 
Ben. par. ii. Proef : c. vii S. 186.) 

Lewis Anthony Miratori, treating of the Am- 
brosian rite of baptism, as performed at Milan, 
says : " Observe the Ambrosian manner of bap- 
tizing. Now-a-days the priests preserve a shadow 



WHAT THE CATHOLICS SAY. 207 

of the ancient Ambrosian form of baptizing, for 
they do not baptize by pouring, as the Romans do ; 
but, taking the infant in their hands, they dip the 
hinder part of his head three times in the baptismal 
water, in the form of the cross, which is a vestige 
yet remaining of the most ancient and universal 
practice of immersion." (Atiq. Ital. Tom. iv. Dis. 
Ixvii.) 

Mattes says : " In regard to the ablution (in bap- 
tism) the present practice of the Latin Church dif- 
fers altogether from that of the ancient church. 
We are accustomed to perform the ablution by 
sprinkling or by pouring water ; but the apostles 
performed it by immersion, and this mode of bap- 
tism was the general practice until far into the 
Middle Ages.'' (Kirchen-Lexicon, art. Taufen of 
Wetzer and Welte.) 

Catholic historians also declare that immersion 
was the general practice of the church for thirteen 
hundred years. 

Dollinger says: "Baptism by immersion con- 
tinued to be the prevailing practice of the church 
as late as the fourteenth century.'' (Hist. Ch. vol. 
2, p. 295.) 

Cardinal Gibbons, the foremost Catholic in the 
United States, says: "For several centuries after 
the establishment of Christianity, baptism was usu- 



208 IMMERSION. 

ally conferred by immersion ; but since the twelfth 
century the practice of baptizing by affusion has 
prevailed in the Catholic Church, as this manner 
is attended with less inconvenience than baptism 
by immersion." (Faith of Our Fathers, p. 275.) 

F. Brenner, in a very learned book, says : "Thir- 
teen hundred years was baptism generally and or- 
dinarily performed by the immersion of a man 
under water, and only in extraordinary cases was 
sprinkling or affusion permitted. These latter 
methods of baptism were called in question, 
and even prohibited." (Augusti, Denkwurd, vii, 
p. 68.) 

There is a remarkable difference in the way 
Catholics and Protestants defend sprinkling. Prot- 
estants try to prove it from the Bible ; but Cath- 
olics very frankly state that the Church changed 
the rite from immersion to sprinkling. Our Pedo- 
baptist brethren have no answer to this statement 
of the case. The Catholic does not appeal to the 
Scripture, for it does not teach sprinkling; but 
the Church has authority over all ceremonies, and 
to him his position is impregnable. This could 
be proved by a multitude of authors, but two are 
sufficient. 

Bishop Bossuet says : " The decision of Con- 
stance, in approbation of and for retaining com- 



WHAT THE CATHOLICS SAY. 209 

munion under one kind, is one of those, wherein 
our adversaries think they have the most advan- 
tage. But in order to be convinced of the grav- 
ity and constancy of the Church in this decree, we 
need but remember that the Council of Constance, 
when they passed it, had found the custom of com- 
municating under one kind established, beyond 
contradiction, many ages before. The case was 
much the same as that of baptism by immersion, 
as clearly grounded on Scripture as communion 
under both kinds could be, and which, neverthe- 
less, had been changed into infusion, with as much 
ease and as little contradiction as communion un- 
der one kind was established, so that the same 
reason stood for retaining one as the other. It is 
a fact most certainly avowed in the Eeformation, 
although some will cavil at it, that baptism was 
instituted by immersing the whole body into water; 
that Jesus Christ received it so, and caused it to 
be so given by his Apostles; that the Scripture 
knows no other baptism than this ; that antiquity 
so understood and practiced it; that the word it- 
self implies it, to baptize being the same as to dip ; 
this fact, I say, is unanimously acknowledged by 
all the divines of the Reformation, nay, by the 
Reformers themselves, and those even who best 

understood the Greek language and the ancient 
14 



210 IMMERSION. 

customs as well of the Jews as Christians ; by Lu- 
ther, by Melancthon, by Calvin, by Casaubon, by 
Grotius, by all the rest, and lately even by Jurien, 
the most contradictory of all ministers. Nay, Lu- 
ther has observed that the German word signify- 
ing baptism was derived from thence, and this 
sacrament named Taufy from profundity or depth, 
because the baptized were deeply plunged into 
water.'' (Varia. Protest, vol. 2, p. 370.) 

The same views prevail among Catholics in the 
United States. I wrote Cardinal Gibbons in re- 
gard to baptism, and he at once referred me to .the 
work of Archbishop Kenrick on that subject as 
authoritative and as giving the information I de- 
sired. Archbishop Kenrick says: ^' The change of 
discipline which has taken place to baptism should 
not surprise us, for although the Church is but the 
dispenser of the sacraments which her Divine 
Spouse instituted, she rightfully exercises a discre- 
tionary poioer as to the manner of their administra- 
tion. She can not change their substance. Bap- 
tism essentially consists of a washing with water 
under the invocation of the three Divine Persons. 
She can not substitute any other liquid, however 
precious, or any other formulary. The ablution 
can in no circumstances be dispensed with, but the 
manner of making it can be more or less solemn, 



WHAT THE CATHOLICS SAY. 211 

according to her ivise discretion. Immersion was 
well suited to the Eastern nations, whose habits 
and climate prepared them for it, and was therefore 
practiced in the commencement, whenever neces- 
sity did not prevent it. Cases, which at first were 
exceptional, gradually multiplied, so that at length 
the ordinary mode of baptism was by affusion. 
The Church wisely sanctioned that which, although 
less solemn, is equally effectual. The power of 
binding and loosing, which she received from 
Christ, warrants this exercise of governing wisdom^ 
that the difference of times and places being con- 
sidered, condescension may he used in regard to the 
mode of administering the sacraments without dan- 
ger to their integrity. It is not for individuals 
to question a right which has been at all times 
claimed and exercised by those to whom the dis- 
pensation of the mysteries is divinely intrusted.'* 
(Kenrick on Bap. p. 174.) 

In regard to the changing of the ordinance, one 
more quotation will be sufiicient, because it was 
approved by their infallible Pope, Pius IX., and 
hence is maintained by all good Catholics. For 
whatever the Pope formally approves can be quot- 
ed as authoritative Catholic utterance. Pius IX. 
approved Haydock's notes on the Douay Bible. 
And the comment on Matt, iii: 6 is: "The 



212 IMMERSION. 

Church, which can not change the least article of 
faith, is not so tied up In matters of discipline and 
ceremony. Not only the Catholic Church, but 
also the pretended reformed churches, have altered 
the primitive custom in giving the sacrament of 
baptism, and now allow of baptism by sprinkling 
and pouring water upon the person baptized ; nay, 
many of their ministers do it now-a-days by fillip- 
ing a wet finger and thumb over the child's head, 
which it is hard enough to call a baptizing in any 
sense.'' 

While the Catholics now practice affusion be- 
cause the Church changed the rite, they have no 
sympathy with that very foolish idea, " a drop is 
as good as an ocean," and with the flippant man- 
ner in which some persons administer the ordi- 
nance. In addition to the above from Haydock, 
I would commend this passage of Archbishop 
Kenrick to some of our friends: "Where no 
water is applied, it is absurd to suppose bap- 
tism ; where the application of the water is scanty, 
and careless, as when a few drops are sprinkled 
toward a person, or the moist finger is slightly 
pressed on the forehead, there is great reason to 
fear that there is no baptism.'' (p. 5.) 



AVHAT THE EPISCOPALIANS SAY. 213 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

WHAT THE EPISCOPALIANS SAY. 

npHE testimony of the Episcopalians is clear 
-'^ and conclusive as to the original manner of 
baptizing. There has been no hesitation among 
Episcopalian scholars in declaring that the Script- 
ures teach immersion. It was one of the last of 
the Pedobaptist churches that admitted sprinkling 
as baptism, and England was one of the very last 
countries that admitted sprinkling for baptism. 
Dr. Wall, a very learned Episcopalian, says: 

"One would have thought that the cold coun- 
tries should have been the first that should have 
changed the custom from dipping to affusion, be- 
cause in cold climates the bathing of the body in 
water may seem much more unnatural and dan- 
gerous to the health than in hot ones (and it is to 
be noted, by the way, that all of those countries 
of whose rites of baptism, and immersion used in 
it, we have any account in the Scriptures or other 
ancient history, are in hot climates, where fre- 
quent and common bathing both of infants and 
grown persons is natural, and even necessary to 
the health). But by history it appears that the 



214 IMMERSION. 

cold climates held the custom of dipping as long 
as any ; for England, which is one of the coldest, 
was one of the latest that admitted this alteration 
of the ordinary way. . . . The offices or litur- 
gies for public baptism in the Church of England 
did all along, so far as I can learn, enjoin dipping, 
without any mention of pouring or sprinkling. 
The Manuele ad usum Sarum, printed 1530, the 
21st of Henry Ylllth, orders thus for the public 
baptisms : ^ Then let the priest take the child and, 
having asked the name, baptize him by dipping 
him in the water thrice,' &c. And John Frith, 
writing in the year 1533 a Treatise of Baptism, 
calls the outward part of it the plunging down 
into it, and lifting up again ; which he often men- 
tions, without ever mentioning pouring or sprink- 
ling. In the Common Prayer Book printed in 
1549, the 2nd of King Edward Ylth, the order 
stands thus : ' Shall dip it in the water thrice,' &c., 
' so it be discreetly and warily done, saying, N, 
I baptize thee,' &c. But this order adds : ' And 
if the child be weak, it shall suffice to pour water 
upon it, saying the aforesaid words.' Afterward 
the book do leave out the word thrice, and do say, 
* Shall dip it in the water, so it be discreetly,' &c,, 
which alteration, I suppose, was made in the 6th 
of Edward the Vlth, for then there was a new 



WHAT THE EPISCOPALIANS SAY. 215 

edition of the book, with some light alterations. 
And from thence it stood unaltered as to this mat- 
ter to the 14th of Charles II.'' (WalPs Hist. Inft. 
Bap. vol 1, pp. 575, 579.) 

There need be nothing more added to tell how 
sprinkling became the practice of the Episcopalian 
Church. 

But as to the testimony of Episcopalians to the 
primitive act of baptism I could give innumerable 
names of the highest authority. I will have to 
content myself with a few selections. I shall be- 
gin with Dr. Wall, whom I have just quoted on 
another matter. 

Dr. Wall says : " Their general and ordinary 
way was to baptize by immersion, or dipping the 
person, whether it was an infant or grown man or 
woman, into the water. This is so plain and clear 
from an infinite number of passages that, as one 
can not but pity the weak endeavors of such Pedo- 
baptists as would maintain the negative of it, so 
also we ought to disown and show a dislike of the 
profane scoffs which some people give to the English 
anti-Pedobaptists merely for their use of dipping. 
It is one thing to maintain that that circumstance is 
not absolutely necessary to the essence of baptism, 
and another to go about to represent it as ridiculous 
and foolish, or as shameful and indecent; when 



216 IMMERSION. 

it was, in all probability, the way by wbich our 
blessed Saviour, and for certain was the most usual 
and ordinary way by which the ancient Christians, 
did receive their baptism. I shall not stay to pro- 
duce the particular proofs of this. Many of the 
quotations which I brought for other purposes, 
and do bring, do evince it. It is a great want of 
prudence, as well as of honesty, to refuse to grant 
to an adversary what is certainly true, and may 
be proved so. It creates a jealousy of all the rest, 
one says." (Hist. Inft. Bap. vol. 1, pp. 570, 571.) 

B. H. Kennedy, late Professor of Greek, Cam- 
bridge, Eng., A. D. 1888, says : " That baptizo and 
its root word hapto, both of them, generally mean 
to dip, to immerse, is true ; and upon this truth in 
part, in part upon the fact that our Lord and oth- 
ers, when baptized in the river Jordan, did go 
down into the water, and so were immersed, the 
Christian sect, commonly called Baptists, found 
their practices of immersion.'' 

John Henry Blount, M. A., F. S. A., says : " It 
means dipping or bathing (Naaman, 2 Kings v : 
14, and Judith xii : 7, Lxx), the washing of cups 
and dishes (Mark vii : 3, Heb. ix : 10) ; also sig- 
nifies overwhelming sorrows and sufferings (Isa. 
xxi : 4, LXX ; Luke xii : 50, Matt, xx : 22). From 
all of which we may gather the meaning of a thor- 



WHAT THE EPISCOPALIANS SAY. 217 

ough cleansing, as by immersion or washing, and 
not by mere affusion or sprinkling of a few drops 
of water.'' (Die. Doc. and His. Theol. Art. Bap.) 

Charles Wheatly, in his recent work on the 
Book of Common Prayer, London, 1885, p. 349, 
says: "However, except upon extraordinary oc- 
casions, baptism was seldom, or perhaps never, 
administered for the first four centuries, but by 
immersion or dipping. Nor is aspersion or sprink- 
ling ordinarily used, to this day, in any country 
that was never subject to the Pope. And among 
those that submitted to his authority, England was 
the last place where it was received. Though it 
has never obtained, so far as to be enjoined, dip- 
ping having been always prescribed by the rubric' 

Dean Stanley says: "Baptism was not only 
a bath, but a plunge — an entire submersion in the 
deep water, a leap as into the rolling sea or the 
rushing river, where for the moment the waves 
close over the bather's head, and he emerges again 
as from a momentary grave ; or it was the shock of 
a shower bath — the rush of water passed over the 
whole person from capacious vessels, so as to wrap 
the recipient as within the vail of a splashing cat- 
aract. This was the part of the ceremony that the 
Apostles laid so much stress. It seemed to them 
like a burial of the old former self, and the rising 



218 IMMERSION. 

up again of the new self. So St. Paul compared 
it to the Israelites passing through the roaring 
waves of the Ked Sea, and St. Peter to the passing 
through the deep waters of the flood. ^ We are 
buried/ said St. Paul, ' with Christ by baptism at 
his death ; that like as Christ was raised, thus we 
also should walk in the newness of life.' Bap- 
tism, as the entrance into the Christian society, 
was a complete change from the old superstitions 
or restrictions of Judaism, to the freedom and con- 
fidence of the Gospel; from the idolatries and 
profligacies of the old heathen world to the light 
and purity of Christianity. It was a change effected 
only by the same effort and struggle as that with 
which a strong swimmer or an adventurous diver 
throws himself into the stream and struggles with 
the waves, and comes up with increased energy 
out of the depths of the dark abyss.'' (Christ. 
Inst. p. 7, 8.) 

Bishop Ellicott says : " Jewish ablutions . . . 
had nothing in common with the figurative act 
which portrayed through immersion the com- 
plete disappearance of the old nature, and by 
emerging again, the beginning of a totally new 
life.'' (Life of Christ, p. 110.) 

Dr. C. Geikie says : ^^ It was, hence, impossi- 
ble to see a convert go down into a stream, travel- 



WHAT THE EPISCOPALIANS SAY. 219 

worn, and soiled with dust, and, after disappearing 
for a moment, emerge pure and fresh, without feel- 
ing that the symbol suited and interpreted a strong 
craving of the human heart. It was no formal 
rite with John.'' (Life of Christ, p. 276.) 

Dean Alford says: ^^The baptism was admin- 
istered in the day time, by immersion of the whole 
person." (Gr. N. T., vol. 1, p. 20.) 

Edersheim says : " It was as if symbolical, in 
the words of St. Peter (1 Pet. iii: 21), that bap- 
tism had been a flood, and he now emerged from 
it, ... . indicative of a new life. Here, at 
these waters, was the kingdom into which Jesus 
had entered in the fulfillment of all righteousness ; 
and from thence he emerged as its heaven desig- 
nated, heaven qualified, and heaven proclaimed 
king.'' (Life of Christ, vol. 1, p. 284.) 

There is a feeling on the part of a great many 
eminent Episcopalians to restore the primitive im- 
mersion among them. This is advocated by many 
of their foremost men. In 1861, Mr. Crystal pub- 
lished a book on " The modes of Christian Bap- 
tism," in which he ardently defended the return 
of the Episcopal Church to immersion as the act 
of baptism. Among other things he said : "It is 
evident, 1. That if we restore immersion, we only 
restore what has ever been our theory, so far back 



220 IMMERSION. 

as the history of the Anglican Church extends. 
We correct only a late and not primitive practice. 
2. Should we restore the trine immersion as the 
general practice, we should have good reason to 
lay claim to the only mode which, so far as we can 
judge from all the testimony which the early 
church affords, can lay historically attested claim 
to being the normal mode of the Apostles.'* 
(p. 213.) 

Bishop Smith, of Kentucky, was a defender of 
immersion. Said he : " We have only to go back 
six or eight hundred years, and immersion was the 
only mode, except in case of the few baptized on 
their beds when death was near. And with regard 
to such cases, it disqualified its recipient for holy 
orders in case he recovered. Immersion was not 
only universal six or eight hundred years ago, but 
it was primitive and apostolic, no case of baptism 
standing on record by any other mode for the first 
three hundred years, except the few cases of those 
baptized clinically, lying in bed. If any one 
practice of the early church is clearly established, 
it is immersion." But Bishop Smith was not satis- 
fied with a mere statement of the case ; he desired 
a restoration of the primitive practice. Accord- 
ingly, he immersed his own infant child, having 
previously declared it advisable to send some 



WHAT THE EPISCOPALIANS SAY. 221 

Episcopali^s to Greece, that they might obtain 
immersion from those who had practiced it in reg- 
ular succession from the Apostles, and on their re- 
turn restore the practice quietly and without noise 
throughout his comipunion. (Kenrick on Bap. 
p. 150.) 

I have before me a noble letter from the most 
scholarly Bishop of the Episcopal Church in 
America — Bishop A. Cleveland Coxe, Buffalo, 
New York. He is the editor of that learned 
work that has just come from the press — The 
Ante-Nicene Fathers. While I differ from him in 
some statements, he does say that '^ dip " is the 
meaning of the word baptize ; and, farther, that 
the primitive rite of dipping should be restored in 
all Christian churches. This is in every way so 
remarkable that I give his letter entire : 

Buffalo, N. Y., April 16th, 1890. 
Rev. and Dear Sir, — Yours of the 31st ult. 
came to hand at the very busiest season of our 
*' Christian year." I have had no time since then 
to answer half of my letters. I laid yours aside, 
hoping to find a spare hour to reply to it, as it 
merits. I dare not wait any longer, and must 
therefore answer in few words, as follows : 

1. The word means to dip. 

2. I think the "sacred writers" used the word 



222 IMMERSION. 

in the primary sense, but also for oth^r washings 
which were not dippings. So did also the class- 
ical writers, with great freedom and variety of 
meanings. 

3. In the Church of England dipping is even 
now the primary rule. But it is not the ordinary 
custom. It survived far down into Queen Eliza- 
beth's time, but seems to have died out early in 
the seventeenth century. It never has become 
obsolete. I, myself, have baptized by dipping 
both adults and babes. 

I ought to add that in France (unreformed) the 
custom of dipping became obsolete long before it 
was disused in England. But for this had example 
my own opinion is that dipping would still pre- 
vail among Anglicans. 

1 7vish that all Christians would restore the primi- 
ive practice. I say this, tho' I believe the other 
to be valid — as in the case of clinic baptism — in 
in early Christian history. 

In Christ your friend and Brother, 

A. Cleveland Coxe. 



WHAT THE PRESBYTERIANS SAY. 223 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

WHAT THE PRESBYTERIANS SAY. 

A S to the original act of baptism, the scholar-^ 
-^-^ ship of the Presbyterian Church has all been 
on one side. They declare that the original act 
of baptism was immersion. I shall present the 
statements of some Presbyterians and give some 
history in this chapter. 

John Calvin, the father of the Presbyterian 
Church, never failed to testify that baptism was 
an immersion in water. Says he : " The word bap- 
tize signifies to immerse, and it is certain that the 
rite of immersion was observed by the ancient 
church." (Inst. Book 4, c. 15.) 

Beza, who was a colleague of Calvin, testifies : 
"Christ commanded us to be baptized, by which 
word it is certain immersion is signified." " To 
be baptized in water signifies no other than to be 
immersed in water, which is the external ceremony 
of baptism." 

Zwingle, another of Calvin's associates, said: 
"When ye were immersed into the water of bap- 
tism, ye were engrafted into the death of Christ ; 
that is, the immersion of your body into water 



224 IMMERSION. 

was a sign that ye ought to be engrafted into 
Christ and his death, that as Christ died and was 
buried, ye also may be dead to the flesh and the 
old man, that is, to yourselves/' (Com. Rom. 
vi: 3.) 

Dr. John Diodati, of Geneva, one of the most 
learned men of his times and a member of the 
Synod of Dort, says of the baptism of John: 
" Plunged in the water for a sacred sign and seal 
of the expiation and remission of sins." (Annotat. 
1648, p. 6, vol. 2.) On Rom. vi: 3, he says: " In 
baptism, being dipped in water according to the 
ancient ceremony, it is a sacred figure to us that 
sin ought to be drowned in us by God's Spirit." 
(Vol 2, p. 158.) 

Although these early Presbyterians were thus 
positive about the apostolic act of baptism, they 
erred in not following what they confessed the 
Scriptures thus plainly taught. Calvin took the 
ground that it was a matter of no consequence, 
and that churches ought to be left at liberty on 
this question. No flood gate was ever opened 
wider, and innumerable have been the evils that 
have followed from this position. I will give his 
theory in his own words, as they are sufiiciently 
explicit: "Wherefore the Church did grant lib- 
erty to herself, since the beginning, to change the 



WHAT THE PRESBYTERIANS SAY. 225 

rites somewhat, excepting the substance. It is of no 
consequence at all whether the person that is bap- 
tized is totally immersed, or whether he is merely 
sprinkled by an affusion of water. This should 
be a matter of choice to the churches in different 
regions.^^ This is exactly the Roman Catholic 
position, and will always end in direct disobedi- 
ence to the commands of Jesus Christ. 

In another chapter I have shown some of the 
practical workings of this thing. John Knox and 
many others were compelled to flee from Scotland 
during the reign of bloody Mary, and they sought 
an asylum at Geneva. Here they enthusiastically 
accepted the views of John Calvin. When they 
returned home they carried these opinions with 
them. They at once advocated affusion for bap- 
tism instead of immersion. This idea slowly 
grew, and the people were much divided. At 
length, when the Westminster Assembly of Divines 
met to frame a creed and government for the 
Presbyterian Church, sprinkling was carried over 
immersion by one vote. The vote stood 25 to 24. 
The Presbyterian Church came this near forever 
practicing the apostolic act of baptism, and yet 
there be some who defend sprinkling on the 
ground of its being scriptural. It was only through 

the influence of Dr. Lightfoot, who was President 
15 



226 IMMEESION. 

of the Assembly, that sprinkling was admitted 
at all. 

These are such interesting statements that I will 
give the transaction in the words of Dr. Light- 
foot himself. He was the principal actor in the 
matter and kept a journal, and so his testimony- 
may be reckoned unbiased. Dr. Lightfoot said: 
" Then we fell upon the work of the day, which 
was about baptizing 'of the child, whether to dip 
him or to sprinkle.' And this proposition, ' It 
is lawful and sufficient to besprinkle the child,- 
had been canvassed before our adjourning, and 
was ready now to vote ; but I spake against it, as 
being very unfit to vote; that it is lawful to 
sprinkle when every one grants it. Whereupon 
it was fallen upon, sprinkling being granted, 
whether dipping should be tolerated with it. And 
here fell we upon a large and long discourse, 
whether dipping were essential, or used in the first 
institution, or in the Jews' custom. Mr. Coleman 
went about, in a large discourse, to prove ibilh to 
be dipping overhead. Which I answered at large. 
After a long dispute, it was at last put to the ques- 
tion, whether the Directory should run thus, ' The 
minister shall take water, and sprinkle or pour it 
with his hand upon the face or forehead of the 
child;' and it was voted so indifferently, that we 



WHAT THE PRESBYTERIANS SAY. 227 

were glad to count names twice; for so many 
were so unwilling to have dipping excluded, that 
the votes came to an equality within one; for the 
one side were 24, the other 25, the 24 for the re- 
serving of dipping, and the 25 against it; and 
there grew a great heat upon it, and when we had 
done all, we concluded upon nothing in it, but the 
business was recommitted." 

"Aug. 8th. But as to the dispute itself about 
dipping, it was thought safe and most fit to let it 
alone, and to express it thus in our Directory: 
' He is to baptize the child with water, which for 
the manner of doing is not only law^ful, but also 
sufficient, and most expedient to be by pouring or 
sprinkling of w^ater on the face of the child, with- 
out any other ceremony.' But this lost a great 
deal of time about the wording of it.'' (Works, 
vol. 13, p. 299, London 1824.) 

Thus was affiision established in the Prebyterian 
Church. To say the least, this is a very remark- 
able history. 

But notwithstanding this the foremost scholars, 
have always conceded that immersion is baptism.. 
I shall present the names of only a few, but they are 
all representative men. 

I begin with the great Turretin, who was a Pro- 
fessor of Theology in Geneva. He says : " For as 



228 IMMERSION. 

in baptism when performed in the primitive man- 
ner, by immersion and emersion, descending into 
the water, and again going out of it, of which 
descent and ascent we have an example in the 
eunuch. Acts viii : 38, 39 ; yea, and what is more, 
as by this rite, when persons are immersed in wa- 
ter, they are overwhelmed and, as it were, buried, 
and in a manner buried together with Christ, and 
again they emerge, seem to be raised out of the 
grave, and are said to be risen again with Christ.'^" 
(Works, vol. 3, p. 326, Edinburg ed. 1847.) 

Kichard Baxter, and the Presbyterians never 
had a greater man, says : " It is commonly con- 
fessed by us to the Anabaptists, as our commen- 
tators declare, that in the Apostles' time the bap- 
tized were dipped over head in the water, and 
this signified their profession, both of believing the 
burial and the resurrection of Christ, and of their 
own renouncing the world and flesh, or dying to 
sin and living to Christ, or rising again to newness 
of life, or being buried and risen again with Christ, 
as the Apostle expounded in the forecited texts of 
Col. and Rom. And though (as before said) we 
have thought it lawful to disuse the manner of dip- 
ping, and to use less water, yet we presume not to 
change the use and signification of it.'' (Dis. Right 
to Sac. p. 70.) 



WHAT THE PEESBYTEKIAXS SAY. 229 

Dr. Chalmers, after saying, " the original mean- 
ing of the word baptism is immersion/' remarks : 
" Let it never be forgotten of the Particular Bap- 
tists of England that they form the denomination 
of Fuller and Carey and Ryland and Hall and Fos- 
ter; that they have originated among the greatest 
of all missionary enterprises ; that they have en- 
riched the Christian literature of our country with 
authorship of the .most exalted piety, as well as the 
first talent and the first eloquence ; that they have 
waged a very noble and successful war with the 
hydra of Antinomiauism ; that perhaps there is not 
a more intellectual community of ministers in our 
island, or who have put forth to their number a 
greater amount of mental power and mental activ- 
ity in the defense and illustration of our common 
faith ; and, what is better than all of the triumphs 
of genius or understanding, who, by their zeal and 
fidelity and pastoral labor among the congregations 
which they have reared, have done more to swell 
the lists of genuine discipleship in the walks of 
private society, and thus to uphold and to extend 
the living Christianity of our nation.'' (On Rom. 
Lee. 14, p. 76.) 

Dr. Lyman Coleman, for many years Professor 
in Lafayette College, Pa., says: "We can not re- 
sist the conviction that this mode of baptism was 



230 IMMERSION. 

the first departure from the teaching and example 

of the Apostles on this subject It was 

a departure from their teachings ; it was the earli- 
est, fo'r immersion was unquestionably very early 
the common mode of baptism." (x4.ncient Chris. 
Ex. p. 366.) 

Dr. George Campbell was one of the most schol- 
arly men the Presbyterians ever had. He says: 
" I have heard of a disputant of this stamp, in de- 
fiance of etymology and use, maintain that the word 
rendered in the New Testament baptize means more 
properly to sprinkle than to plunge; and, in defi- 
ance of all antiquity, that the former method was 
the earliest, and for many centuries the most gen- 
eral practice in baptizing. One who argues in this 
manner never fails, with persons of knowledge, to 
betray the cause he would defend ; and though, in 
respect to the vulgar, bold assertions generally suc- 
ceed as well as arguments, sometimes better, yet a 
candid mind will disdain to take the help of a false- 
hood even in support of the truth." (Lect. on Pul. 
El. Lect. 10, pp. 294, 295.) 

Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Church 
History in the Union Theological Seminary, New 
York, says : " The baptism of Christ in the river 
of Jordan, and the illustrations of baptism used in 
the New Testament, are all in favor of immersion 



WHAT THE PRESBYTERIANS SAY. 231 

rather than sprinkling, as is freely admitted by the 
best exegetes, Catholic and Protestant, English and 
German. Nothing can be gained by unnatural exe- 
gesis. The aggressiveness of the Baptists has driven 
Pedobaptists to the opposite extreme J^ (Teach, pp. 
55, 56.) 

I have at hand a fresh and new statement of the 
case. The Southern Presbyterians of the United 
States have founded three churches in Greece, and 
all three of them practice immersion. Dr. W. D. 
Powell, of Mexico, recently wrote from Athens, 
Greece, as follows : " I found that all churches in 
Greece — the Presbyterians included — are compelled 
to immerse candidates for baptism, for, as one of 
the professors remarked, ^the commonest day la- 
borer understands nothing else for baptizo but im- 
mersion.' Some Greeks who have made fortunes 
in other countries have built and equipped some 
fine schools and colleges, as well as museums, &c. 
The university has 3000 students, of whom 1200 
are preparing to be doctors and lawyers. I visited 
the university and saw the magnificent library and 
museum. I asked a professor what baptizo meant, 
and he said : ' It has but one meaninor — to sub- 
merge, to immerse. Why do you ask?''* 

In reply to an editorial in the Christian Observer, 
of Louisville, Ky., Dr. Powell writes to the West- 



232 IMMERSION. 

em Recorder, Jan 8th, 1891, as follows : " I asked 
Bro. Sakellarios, who has charge of the Baptist 
Church in Athens, if the Greek word could mean 
any thing but immersion, and he said ^ No.' To 
my inquiry how the Presbyterians managed this 
question, he replied: ^Very easily — by having a 
baptistery made, in which they immerse infants just 
as the Greek priests do.' Said he : ^ Once they 
sprinkled some children, and it created such a 
scandal that it came near breaking up the churchy 
and they were compelled to have a small baptis- 
tery made.' Adult Greeks are received into the 
Presbyterian Church on the baptism which they 
received in the Greek Church. In Greece, Bul- 
garia, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, and wherever 
the Greek language is spoken, immersion for bap- 
tism is practiced." 

Here is an instance where the Presbyterians 
practice what their scholars preach. This is the 
land where Greek is a living language, and noth- 
ing but immersion is practiced there. This little 
statement does away with many a ponderous arti- 
cle written by our Presbyterian brethren to ex- 
plain and defend their practice on this subject. 
We commend this to our Presbyterian brethren. 



WHAT THE METHODISTS SAY. 233 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

WHAT THE METHODISTS SAY. 

nr HAVE been examining Mr. Wesley's works, 
-^ and will give the result of my investigation. 
Turning to his journal, vol. 1, p. 20, under date 
of Saturday, February 21st, 1736, Mr. Wesley 
says ; " Mary Welch, aged eleven days, was bap- 
tized according to the custom of the first churchy and 
the rule of the Church of England ^ by immersion. 
The child was ill then, but recovered from that 
very hour." 

Three things are evident from this: 1. The early 
church practiced immersion. 2. That this was the 
practice of the Church of England ; and 3. That 
this is positively opposed to the doctrine of some 
circuit riders who say that immersion destroys 
health. Before this objection is offered again they 
must change the "standards," as they have often 
done before, and make Mr. Wesley cease to say, 
" the child was ill then, but recovered from that 
very hour." 

The next instance occurred in Savannah, Ga., 
May 5th, 1736, and is most significant. Mr. Wes- 
ley says : " I was asked to baptize a child of Mr. 



234 IMMERSION. 

Parker's, second bailiff of Savannah; but Mrs. 
Parker told me, neither Mr. P. nor I will consent 
to its being dipped ! I answered, if you certify 
that your child is weak, it will suffice (the rubric 
says) to pour water upon it. She replied : ^ Nay, 
the child is not weak, but I am resolved that it 
shall not be dipped.' This argument I could not 
refute, so I went home and the child was baptized 
by another person. (Journal, vol. 1, p. 24.) But 
this was not the end of the matter. On the first 
day of September, 1737, Mr. Wesley was tried by 
a grand jury of forty-four men, found guilty, and 
ordered to leave the country. I will let Mr. 
Wesley state the charges. He says : " Therein 
they asserted, upon oath, that John Wesley, clerk, 
had broken the laws of the realm, contrary to the 
peace of our sovereign lord the King, his honor 
and dignity. 

1. By speaking and writing to Mrs. Williamson, 
against her husband's consent. 

2. By repelling her from the holy communion. 

3. By not declaring his adherence to the Church 
of England. 

4. By dividing the morning services of Sundays. 

5. By refusing to baptize Mr. Parker's child, 
otherwise than by dipping, except the parents 



WHAT THE METHODISTS SAY. 235 

would certify that it was weak, and not able to 
bear it. 

6. For repelling William Gough from the 
holy communion. 

7. By refusing to read the burial services over 
the body of Nathaniel Polhill. 

8. By calling himself ordinary of Savannah. 

9. By refusing to receive William Aglionby, 
as god-father, only because he was not a com- 
municant. 

10. For refusing Jacob Matthews for the same 
reason ; and baptizing an Indian trader's child with 
only two sponsors. (This, I own, was wrong; for 
I ought, at all hazards, to have refused baptizing it 
till he had procured a third.) '' (Journal, vol. 1, 
pp. 42, 43.) 

This is a strange record for the father of the 
Methodists. John Wesley v/as tried and found 
guilty by the courts of the land for refusing to 
sprinkle a baby ! Dr. Watson, in his Life of 
Wesley, professes to give a fair account of this trial 
of Wesley, and yet he says not a word about this 
child He mentions a few of the most trivial 
charges, and altogether treats the trial as a small 
affair. Does not this look like trying to conceal 
an important &ct? And talk of close communion. 



236 IMMERSION. 

No Baptist of my acquaintance has ever " repelled " 
a man and a woman from the Lord's table. 

On June the 25th, he re-baptized John Smith ; 
and March 21st, 1759, he baptized two adults by 
immersion.'^ (Journal, vol. 2, p. 16.) 

I have heard men speak very largely upon the 
figurative use of the word baptize ; baptized in 
wine, sleep, dews of heaven, etc. But all such 
persons need to do is to turn to Mr. Wesley's 
Journal, vol. 2, p. 152, and read of a certain man 
" who was wet all over with sweat as if he had 
been dipped in water.'' 

In the old Discipline, compiled by Wesley, 
Jesus was baptized in the river of Jordan, and the 
sixth of Romans means simply a burial in water. 
On the baptism of suffering, Mark x : 38, he says : 
" Our Lord was filled with sufferings, and covered 
with them without." 

I now turn to Wesley's Notes on the New Tes- 
tament, and under Rom. vi ; 3, I read ; " We are 
buried with him, alluding to the ancient manner 
of baptizing by immersion." 

Adam Clarke follows Wesley in his admissions. 
He says, in reference to the baptism of John: 
" That the baptism of John was by plunging the 
body (after the same manner as the washing unclean 
persons, and the baptism of proselytes was), seems 



WHAT THE METHODISTS SAY. 237 

to appear from those things that are related of 
him ; namely, that he baptized in Jordan, that he 
baptized in Enon, because there was much water 
there; and that Christ being baptized came up out 
of the water; to which that seems to be parallel, 
Acts, viii: 38, Philip and the eunuch went down 
into the water," &c. (Com. vol. 3, p. 344.) 

In his comment on Rom. vi: 4, he says: "We 
are buried with him by baptism into death. It is 
probable that the apostle alludes to the mode of 
administering baptism by immersion, the whole 
body being put under water, which seems to say 
the man is drowned, is dead ; and, when he came 
up out of the water, he seemed to have a resurrec- 
tion to life; the man is risen again, he is alive. 
He was, therefore, supposed to throw off his old 
gentile state, as he threw off his clothes, and to 
assume a new character, as the baptized generally 
put on a new or fresh garment." (Com. vol. 4, 
p. 78.) 

On Colossians ii: 12, Clarke says: "Alluding 
to the immersion practiced in the case of adults, 
wherein the person appeared to be buried under 
the water, as Christ was buried in the heart of the 
earth. His rising again the third day, and their 
emerging from the water, was an emblem of the 



238 IMMERSION. 

resurrection of the body, and, in them, of a total 
change of life/' (Com. vol. 4, p. 538.) 

Gregory and Kuter say in their Church History : 
"The initiatory rite of baptism was usually per- 
formed by immersing the whole body in the bap- 
tismal font, and in the earlier years of Christianity 
was permitted to all who acknowledged the truths 
of the Gospel and promised conformity to its 
laws." (Hist. p. 34.) Of the second century they 
say : " Baptism was publicly performed twice a 
year. The catechumens (or probationers for bap- 
tism) assembled in the church on the great festi- 
vals of Easter and Whitsuntide; and after a pub- 
lic declaration of their faith, and a solemn assur- 
ance from their sponsors that it was their inten- 
tion to live conformably to the Gospel, they re- 
ceived the sacrament of baptism. This rite was 
performed by three immersions and the body was 
divested of clothes. In order to preserve decency 
in the operation, the baptismal font of the women 
was separated from that of the men, and they were 
as much as possible attended by the deaconnesses 

of the church.'' (Church Hist. p. 53.) 

I have before me a very recent book, 1889, from 
the Methodist press. It is called Christian Arch- 
aeology, by Charles W. Bennett, D.D. It is edited 
by George K. Crooks, D.D., and Bishop John F. 



WHAT THE METHODISTS SAY. 239 

Hurst. The preface announces that '' the theology 
of the" volume is in ^^ harmony with the stand- 
ards of the Methodist Episcopal Church." This 
is certainly authoritative as well as fresh. Dr. 
Bennett says : " The customary mode was used by 
the apostles in the baptism of the first converts. 
They were familiar with the baptism of John's 
disciples and of the Jewish proselytes. This was 
ordinarily by dipping or immersion. This is in- 
dicated not only by the general signification of the 
words used in describing the rite, but the earliest 
testimony of the documents which have been pre- 
served gives preference to this mode 

The terms of Scripture describing the rite, most of 
the figures used by the writers of the New Testa- 
ment to indicate its significance (Rom. vi : 4 ; Col. 
ii : 12, et al.), the explanations of the Apostolic 
Constitutions, the comments of the foremost Chris- 
tian fathers for the first six centuries, and the ex- 
press instructions of ecclesiastical councils, indi- 
cate that immersion was the more usual mode of 
baptism.'^ (Chris. Arch. pp. 396, 397.) 

The scholarship of the Methodist Church joins 
with that of all others in proclaiming that immer- 
sion is apostolic. 



240 IMMEESION. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

WHAT THE SYRIAC SAYS. 

/^NE of the oldest, if not the oldest, translation 
^ of the New Testament is that of the Peshito 
Syriac. It was made in the second century in the 
very country where the apostles lived and wrote. 
It is regarded by scholars as one of the best trans- 
lations of the New Testament ever made. From 
these considerations the Syriac is of much impor- 
tance. 

The word used in the Syriac to translate the 
Greek word baptize is amad. It has been claimed 
by some that amad means "to stand." Gesenius 
defines the Hebrew word which corresponds with 
amad "to stand,'' and adds: "In the Syriac 
Church amad is *to baptize,' perhaps because the 
person to be baptized stood in the water ; but see 
Castell Lex. ed. Michaelis sub verbo." This 
standing up in the water suits the idea of immer- 
sion rather than that of sprinkling or pouring; 
for certainly no one " stands in the water " to re- 
ceive sprinkling or pouring. If the word means 
to stand, sprinkle or pour can not be a direct 
translation of it. 



WHAT THE SYRIAC SAYS. 241 

If I was forced to the conclusion that the Syriac 
amad must be limited to the idea of standing, I 
should prefer to regard it as meaning "to take a 
stand/' and so to make the public profession. 
Baptism is the appointed method of professing to 
be a Christian, and the word indicating the thing 
accomplished by baptism may have come to be 
used for the act of baptism itself. This position 
is suggested by eminent Pedobaptist scholars. 
Dr. Isaac H. Hall, of the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, New York, one of the foremost Syriac 
scholars of our country, writes me under date of 
February 7, 1891: "I think the word was orig- 
inally the same as the Hebrew and the Arabic, 
and that it meant to stand , to set up. Baptizing 
was thus taking a stand or position as one of the 
visible church. Thence used to render baptizein, 
it obtained finally the meaning to dip, or to im- 
merse.^^ If this is the meaning of the word, I have 
only to observe two things : 1. In that view it 
primarily gives no indication as to the act of bap- 
tism, but by usage the word came to mean to dip ; 
and 2. That it explicitly disagrees with the bap- 
tism of infants who do not " take a stand,*' or 
make any personal profession, any more than they 
*' stand up in the water '' to be baptized. So the 

word in that understanding of it gives no aid to 
IG 



242 IMMERSION. 

our Pedobaptist brethren. It does not help them 
as to the act, and it is distinctly opposed to their 
teaching as to the subjects. 

The view, however, which seems to be the most 
probable is, that the Syriac word means to im- 
merse. It is claimed by B. Davies, in his Hebrew 
Lexicon, that besides the ordinary Hebrew word 
araad, meaning "to stand,'' there is a second root, 
spelled and pronounced exactly like it, and mean- 
ing "to sink,'' and so to be overwhelmed. Fiirst, 
in his lexicon, gives amad three times, as three 
separate roots; the first being the ordinary one 
"to stand," the second "to waver," and the third 
"to be inclined, to lean to a thing, to turn to one 
side," and from this third root he derives the com- 
mon Hebrew preposition immad. 

Without going into any discussion as to the root 
of the word amad in Hebrew in these various 
senses, which is only indirectly in line with our 
investigations, it is sufficient to say that all Syriac 
lexicons recognize immerse as the natural mean- 
ing of the Syriac word amad. 

I present the testimony of the lexicons : 

Castell says: "To bathe, to baptize, to im- 
merse." (Lex. Heptaglot sub. vc. London, 1669.) 

Buxtorf says : " To baptize, to dip, to bathe, to 
bathe oneself." (Lex. Chal. and Syr. Basle, 1622.) 



WHAT THE SYRIAC SAYS. 243 

Guido Fabricus says : " To baptize, to dip, to 
wash." (Ant. Poly. sub. vc. Antwerp, 1592.) 

Michaelis says : " To bathe, to baptize, to im- 
merse." He adds : " In this signification of bap- 
tizing not a few compare with the Hebrew amad- 
stetit (he stood), so that stare is stare in flumine, 
illoque mergi (to stand in the river, and in it to 
be immersed). To me it seems more probable 
that it is altogether different from the Hebrew 
amady and has arisen through some permutation 
of the letters from the (Arabic) amathj submergere 
(to submerge). The signification of standing, com- 
mon to the other Oriental tongues, I do not find, 
among the Syrians, save in the derivative amud,. 
and which is cited from Castell from one place 
(Ex. xiii : 22), but which you will find is read al- 
most everywhere in Hebrew pillar of cloud and 
pillar of fire." 

Gutbier, in the small lexicon affixed to his edi- 
tion of the Syriac New Testament, gives the mean- 
ing, "to baptize, he was baptized, he upheld." 
This last meaning has no reference to support it,, 
and it is apparently introduced only with the pur- 
pose of deriving from this sense of the verb the- 
noun amud J which means a column. With this 
exception I do not find in any Syriac lexicon the 



244 IMMERSION. 

expression to stand, or any similar expression, 
given as a signification of the Syriac word amad. 

Bernstein says: "To immerse, to be immersed, 
to immerse oneself." (Chres. Syr. Leipzig, 1836, 
p. 378.) 

The latest and most authoritative of all the 
Syriac lexicons is that of R. Payne Smith, pub- 
lished last year in England. G. B. Bernstein, of 
Germany, gathered much material for such a work 
during his laborious life, and at his death this 
material passed into the hands of Dean Smith. 
Now, after years of work, and with the co-opera- 
tion of the foremost Syriac scholars of the world, 
Dean Smith has published his "Thesaurus Syri- 
acus." He defines amad: "to descend, to be im- 
mersed, to be baptized." 

The testimony of these seven lexicons is con- 
clusive. There is not the most distant intimation 
that Jhese scholars ever thought that amad meant 
to sprinkle or to pour. 

The use of the word by Syriac scholars is in 
accord with this idea. All through the Syriac 
Bible amad is used to translate the Greek haptizo ; 
and amad is used ten times in the sense of to dip 
in the Syriac Bible where the ordinance of bap- 
tism is not referred to, and where, therefore, it 
must be used in the ordinary and non-ecclesiastical 



WHAT THE SYRIAC SAYS. 245 

sense. This fact is sufficient to clothe with shame 
those who adduce this Syrian word as an argu- 
ment against immersion. The word is frequently 
used in Syriac literature in the sense of to dip, as 
a diver after pearls, of the setting sun, the enter- 
ing of an arrow into the brain, the three Hebrev/ 
children into the fire, he dipped his mouth into 
the water, &c. 

Ephraem Syrus, of Edessa, speaks of the bap- 
tism of Christ in a way that must include an im- 
mersion. " How wonderful," says he, " that thy 
footsteps were planted on the waters, that the 
great sea should submit itself to thy feet, and that 
yet at a small river that same head of thine should 
be subjected to be bowed down and baptized in it." 

I add an array of authority that is impregnable. 

Theodore Beza says that baptizo means to im- 
merse, and adds: '^Nor does the signification of 
amad, which the Syrians use for baptize, differ at 
all from this." (Annot. in Mark vii: 4.) 

Casparis Clavor, after quoting the Syriac for 
Rom. vi: 4, adds : " "Which may be translated 'in 
baptism,' beyond all doubt referring not to bap- 
tismal sprinkling, but to immersion." (Anniversa- 
rium Dodec, Leipzig, 1719.) 

Dr. John Mason Neale, the greatest Anglican 
connoisseur of the Greek Church, says : " All the 



246 IMMERSION. 

Syrian forms prescribe or assume trine immersion.'' 
(Hist. East. Ch., p. 949.) 

Some years ago Dr. C. H. Toy, Professor of 
Oriental Literature in Harvard University, wrote 
a work upon ^^ Amad.'* His conclusions were; 
'* From our inquiry it appears that there were 
no cases in which amad may not mean dip, and 
some in which it must have that meaning : that 
there are similar verbs in Arabic meaning the 
same thing : that the verb amad, ^ to stand,' proba- 
bly disappeared from the Syriac language some 
centuries before Christ : that it is not satisfactorily 
explained how a meaning baptize could come from 
a meaning stand: and that all authorities in Syriac 
concur in assigning to amad the signification dip." 

I recently wrote Dr. Toy and asked him if morQ 
recent research had confirmed him in these con- 
clusions. He replied: , 

Cambridge, Mass., January 29, 1891. 

De. J. T. Christian: 

Dear Sir, — Your enquiry of the 24th has been 
received. My conclusion was that the stem amad 
in Syriac, signifies "to be dipped." In addition 
to the authorities there quoted, I can now cite the 
great " Thesaurus Syriacus, " edited by Payne Smith, 
with the co-operation of many scholars; in this 



WHAT THE SYRIAC SAYS. 247 

most recent publication (which appeared last year) 
amad is defined as — ^^ descenditj mersus est, bap- 
tizatus esV Yours truly, 

C. H. Toy. 

It is with genuine pleasure that I am able to 
present the additional testimony of Dr. Gottheil, 
of Columbia College, New York; Dr. R. Payne 
Smith, the Dean of Canterbury, England, and the 
author of the great Syriac Lexicon; and of Prof. 
Th. Noldeke, Strasburg, Germany, who is a 
recognized authority in Syriac the world over. 
The testimony of these men is most decisive. 

Dr. Gottheil says : 

Columbia College, N. Y., March 21, 1890. 
My Dear Sir: — 

1. The Syriac word you refer to, amad, means 
really to go down, decline, immerse one's self, 
(e. g. the day declines). 

2. It is used in the sense of haptizein continually 
in the New Testament. 

3. It is from the Arabic glamada, "to put a 
thing within something else, '' (e. g., a sword in its 
sheath). Believe me, very truly yours, 

Richard Gottheil. 



248 IMMERSION. 

Dean Smith writes : 

Deanery, Canterbury, March 20, 1891. 
The Rev. J. T. Christian, D.D. 

Dear Sir, — The strict meaning of amad is to go 
down, descend. It is used of the sun setting, etc., 
and secondly to going down into a brook, river^ 
etc., to wash. The word for baptism is the Aphel 
or Causative form, literally to cause to descendy im- 
merse, dip, either totally or partially. In this sense 
the verb is used in the Syriac New Testament and 
in all ecclesiastical writers for baptize. It an- 
swers to the Greek daptizein in the sense of w^ash- 
ing one's self. The Aphel is seldom used in any 
other sense than that of baptism ; but it is used of 
dipping a bell into water, but possibly as a sort 
of religious ceremony. 

Believe me, very truly yours, 

R. Payne Smith. 

Prof. Th. Noldeke writes: 

Strasburg, Germany, February 17th, 1891. 
Dr. J. T. Christian, Jackson, Miss, : 

Dear Sir, — Amad signifies, as is declared with 
entire correctness by Payne Smith, primarily to 
draw down, to go under, to immerse one^s self. In 
the New Testament it is used with en tire reg- 
ularity for baptizesthai, and always in the passive 



WHAT THE SYEIAC SAYS. 249 

sense: therefore, it is connected with the Syriac 
men-von-hupo. (Math, iii: 13.) By all Syrians it 
is the regular word for being baptized. The 
Christian inhabitants of Palestine, who spoke 
another dialect, have a different word, Atbal; 
which word is also found in use among the Man- 
deans, a peculiar sect in Babylonia, which took its 
origin in part only from Christianity. This word, 
however, signifies immerse (eintauchen). 

I am inclined to believe that John and Jesus, 
as residents of Palestine, used the word atbal or 
tabal for baptize, and that the word amad, which 
extended from Edessa all over Syria, was employed 
to set forth Christian opposition against the usage 
of the Jewish Christian party. That, however, is 
nothing more than a supposition. I would remark, 
in addition, that baptize in the active voice is ex- 
pressed by the causative amad. The Jewish word 
for the baptismal batji is Hetbil. 

Very respectfully, 

Th. Noldeke. 

I, therefore, justly arrive at the conclusion that 
amad means to dip. 

THE END. 



INDEX OF AUTHORS AND SUBJECTS. 



PAGE 

Achilles, Tatius 28 

AdmissioAS of Pedobap- 

tist Scholars 13-15 

^non, Baptism of 50 

^fif«,The 195 

Alabaster 142 

Alcibiades 24 

Alciphron 26 

Alcuiu 76, 117 

Alexander, Dr. Gross. ... 16 

Alford, Dean 219 

Ambrose, Bishop 116 

Apostolic Constitutions. . 121 
Aquinas, Thoma8.134, 159, 204 

Aratus 186 

Argonautic Expedition . . 28 

Ariosto 184 

Aristophen 27 

Arnoldi 205 

Augustine, Bishop.. 117, 150 

Augustine 77, 79 

Avitus, Bishop 76 

Badger 177 

Barnabas 108, 125 

Barnes, Albert 87, 106 

Baronius 148, 155 

Basnage 153 

Basil 113 

Bass 19 

Baxter, Richard 228 



PAGE 

Beaulieu, Madleine de... 176 

Beds, Baptism of 68 

Benardus de Montfaucon 37 
Bennett, Dr. C.W...48, 52, 

72, 106, 147, 202, 238 

Bernardino 144 

Beza 223, 245 

Bickersteth 187,188, 190 

Bjerring, Rev. Nicholas. . 198 

Blackstone 8 

Blount, John Henry. . . . 216 

Bona Ventura 204 

Boniface, St 79 

Bonwetsch, Prof 198 

Bossuet, Bishop 208 

Brazen Vessels 67 

Brenner, F 208 

Brewster, Sir David 158, 

160, 163 
Britannica Encyclopaedia 41 

Brown 9,10, 12, 13 

Bryennios, Bishop.. . 119, 122 

Bullinger, E. W 19 

Bunsen, Baron Ill 

Buried with Christ 102 

Burnstein 244 

Buxtorf 36, 242 

Calcuith, Council of. 169, 170 
Calvin, John 51, 84, 162. 
163, 210, 223, 224, 225, 238 

(251) 



252 



INDEX. 



PAGE I 

Camden 78 

Campbell, Dr. George. 52, 

65, 66, 115, 230 

Carthage, Council of 168 

Cashel, Council of 172 

Casaubon 35 

Castello, E 36, 240, 242 

Catholics, Testimony of.. 204 

Cave 73 

Cereas 195 

Cerfee, Lexicon of 196 

Chalmers, Dr 104, 229 

Chariton 28 

Christian Baptism 57 

Chrysostom 73, 74, 113 

Clarke, Adam... 48, 106, 236 

Classical Baptism 23 

Clavor 245 

Clermont, Council of . . . . 173 

Clinic Baptism 151 

Clough, J. E 82 

Clovis, King 75 

Coke 12, 13 

Cold Countries 161 

Coleman, Lyman 229 

Collier 170 

Cologne, Council of 174 

Conant, T. J 32 

Conon 25 

Conybeare and Howson 

37, 91, 96, 107 

Cooly 10 

Councils 167 

Cowper 30, 93, 185 

Cox, Homersham.... 85, 131 
Coxe, Bishop A. Cleve- 
land .....21, 122, 221 

Cremer 19 

Crystal 219 



PACK 

Cyclades, Bishop of 197 

Cyprian 116, 131, 152, 156 

Cyril of Jerusalem 54 

Dale, J. W 32 

Dante 182,^183 

Davies 36,*242 

Delitzsch, Franz 45 

Demetrius 26 

Demoleon, M 179 

Demosthenes.. 24 

Didache 119 

Dill, J. S 101 

Diodati 224 

Diodorus.... 25 

Dion Cassius 26 

Dionysius 113 

Discipline,Methodist.l81, 251 

Dobbs, C.E. W 129 

Doddridge, Dr 51, 84 

Dollinger, Dr. 49, 72, 134, 

204, 207 

Donnegan 20 

Drown, does haptizo mean 

to 31 

Dryden 186 

Dupin 205 

Durant, Guillaume 179 

Eaton, T. T 98 

EUicott, Bishop... .54, 66, 

85,97, 218 

Endersheim 219 

Epictetus 26 

Episcopalians, testimony ' 

of 213 

Est, Chancellor 105 

Eubulus 24 

Eulogius 77 



INDEX. 



253 



PAGE 

Eunuch, The 83, 115 

Eu8ebius..l51, 152, 154, 155 

Eustathius 29 

Evenus 24 

Fabyan 77 

Fabrycus 243 

Farrar 107, 119 

Fathers, Greek 23, 108 

Fathers, Latin 114 

Felsenthal, Rabbi B 42 

Figurative Meanings.. .30, 38 
Fisher, George P. . . .107, 131 

Fleet, Dr. A. F 192 

Fradensdorf , J. W ] 8 

Frith, John 179 

Fritzche 35 

Funk, Dr 135 

Geikie, C 49, 218 

Giesler 154 

Gesenius, 36-39, 86, 240 

Gibbons, Cardinal. . .207, 210 

Gibbs 36 

Gilbert, Bishop 75 

Glogan, Eitual 178 

Goeelyn 78 

Gothic Missal 176 

Gottheil, R 247 

Gould, S. Baring 143 

Gratus, Bishop 168 

Greek Church 192 

Ancient and Modern 

Greek 192-195 

Greek Ritual 181, 195 

Green 20 

Greenfield 16, 20 

Greenleaf 7, 8, 11, 13 

Gregory Pope. . . .77, 169, 180 
Gregory, Thaumaturgus. 112 



PAGE 

Gregory of Tours 76 

Groves 20 

Gutbier 243 

Hak-Kodesh, Rabbi 40 

Hall, Dr. Isaac H 241 

Harnack, Adolf.. 33, 123, 

124, 129 

Hart. 170,172,174 

Haydock 211 

Heaton 47 

Hebrew lexicons, testi- 
mony of 36 

Hedericus 19 

Heimerius 27 

Heliodorus 28 

Henry 77 

Hersman, C. C 17 

Hibbard, Dr 41,59,96 

Hilgenfeld, Prof 133 

Hincmar 77 

Hippocrates 32, 34 

Hippolytus Ill 

History, testimony of... . 128 

Hodge, C 8 

Hodge, C.W 17 

Hogue, Prof. Addison.... 193 

Holtzman, Prof 66, 133 

Holy Spirit, baptism of.. 51 

Homer 90,92,186 

Homeric Allegories 23 

Humphreys, Prof. M. W. 31 
Hurst, Bishop. . . .48, 106, 202 

Irenseus 110 

Jahn 68 

Jailer's baptism 94 

Jerome 117, 118 

Jesus, baptism of 66 



254 



INDEX. 



PAGE 

John the Baptist 46 

Jonathan 38 

Josephus 25, 34 

Julian., 28, 189 

Justin Martyr 109 

Keane John J 21 

Kennedy 216 

Kenrick, Arch., 49, 56, 

210, 211, 221 

Kincaid, A. J 99 

Kitto 64, 68 

Knapp, George C 154 

Kyriasko, Prof 199 

Labbe and Cossart, 167, 

168, 172, 174 

Langen, Joseph 130 

Lascarides, G. P 21 

Law of baptism 7 

LeClerc 52 

Leo, Rabbi 42 

Lexicons, statement of . . 16 

Libanius... 27 

Liddell and Scott, 16, 17, 

89, 92 

Liddon, Canon 103 

Lingard, Dr. John 79 

Liturgies and Missals... 176 

Livy 30 

Lucian 26 

Luther, Martin, 37, 62, 

158, 210 

Mabillon 206 

Maclaren, Dr 59 

Maimonides 41, 69 

Mallett 142 

Mariott 202 

Marshall, Chief Justice... 10 



PAGE 

Mattes 207 

Martini 176, 179 

Maury, Bonet G. . . . 133, 202 

Methodists, The 233 

Meyer 48, 52, 67, 105 

Michaelis 240, 243 

Milton, John... 37, 38, 93, 

189, 190 

Minerva, The 195 

Miratori 206 

Mishna, The 44 

Moore, Thos 189 

Muller, Max 148 

Naaman, Baptism of. . 36, 

47,49,92, 110 

Neale, John Mason 245 

Neander 54, 59, 80, 153 

Neo-Csesarea, Council of. 156 

Nestor 81 

Newman, Cardinal 148 

Nicene, Council of 167 

Nismes, Council of 174 

N51deke, Th 249 

Noyes 65, 87 

O'Farrel 75 

Olshausen 50, 66 

Onkelos 38 

Oosterzee, Prof. J. J 107 

Origen Ill 

Othelon 79 

Otto, Bishop 80 

Ovid 138, 139 

Oxford, Council of. 173 

Paciandi, Paul Maria. . . . 205 

Paine, Prof. L. L 131 

Parkhurst 37 

Passo w 17 



INDEX. 



255 



PAGE 

Pastor of Hermas....llO, 125 

Patrick, St 74, 75 

Paul, Baptism of 89 

Paulinus, Arch 78, 79 

Perthes 73 

Philo 25, 125 

T^iorce Plowman 183 

Pindar 23 

Plato 23 

Platon, Bishop 197 

Plotinus 26 

Plumptre! 54, 66, 97 

Plutarch 25,26 

Poets, The 182 

Pollok 184 

Polyaenus 26 

Polybius 24,32, 183 

Pope 185, 186 

Pope, Dr. W 19 

•Porphyra 27 

Pothier 11 

Potter, Bishop Henry C. 

21, 53 
Powell, Dr. W. D... . 200, 231 

Prague, Council of 174 

Presbyterians, The 223 

Prescott 144 

Priesthood of Christ 57 

Proclus 28 

Purification, Theory of . . 58 

Ravenna, Council of. 134, 

174, 204 

Reading, Council of 173 

Remingius 76, 177 

Riddle, Dr 122 

Robinson 17, 20, 52, 63, 90 

Romanus, Ordo 178 



PAGE 

Salmasius, 155 

Sarum, Manual 178, 214 

Saxon Visitation 180 

Scapula 20 

Schaff 37 

Schaff, Dr..ll9, 120, 121, 
130, 134, 159, 162, 180, 

201, 230 

Schindleri 37 

Schleusner 20 

Schoettgenius 20 

Schrevellius 20 

Seneca 30 

Septuagint 36, 87 

Shakespeare 30 

Simplicius 29 



Smith, Bishop 220 

Smith, R. Payne 244, 248 

Sophocles, E. A. .18, 196, 200 
Sprinkling, a heathen 
custom, 136 ; history 
of, 158 ; many nations, 
85; France first coun- 
try where practiced, 
160 ; introduction into 

England 163 

Stanley, Dean, 60, 81, 
128, 134, 147, 157, 164, 

180, 200, 217 

Starkie 13 

Stephanus 19, 65 

Stephen, Pope 153 

Stockius 20, 37 

Stourdza.., 197 

Strabo 24, 33 

Strabo, Walafrid 134 

Stuart, 21, 37, 39, 50, 110, 

116, 202 



256 



INDEX. 



PAGE 

Suicer 20 

Summers, Thos. 71, 94 

Syriac, The, 240 ; Ritual, 177 
Syrus, Ephraim 245 

Tables, baptism of 67 

Talmage, Dr 60 

Talmud , Jerusalem 40 

Taylor, Bishop Jeremy... 60 

Targum 38 

" Teaching of the Twelve 

Apostles," 119 

Tertullian 114, 117 

Thayer, J. H., 17, 18, 32, 

34, 65, 90, 92 

Themistius 27 

Three thousand, baptism 
of, 71 ; Not all baptized 
in one day, 71; Ex- 
amples of the baptism 

of thousands 73 

Timayennis 198 

Tischendorf 67 

Todd,Dr 74, 75 

Toledo, Council of 168 

Toy, Dr. C. H 246 

Trench 92 

Tribur, Council of 171 

Trine immersion 117 

Trumbull, Dr 59 

Turretin 227 



PAGE 

Use of Words 8-12 

Valesius 155 

Venema 155 

Vicecomes, Dr 206 

Virgil 30, 138, 185, 186 

Vladimir 81 

Vulgate 52 

Wahl 19 

Wall, Dr.... 160-162, 165, 

178, 201, 213, 215 

Watson, Dr 235 

AVatts 185 

Webster 39 

Wescott 65, 67 

Wesley, John, 38, 104, 233-236 
Westminster, Assembly 

of Divines 225 

Westminster, Council of. 172 

Wheatley 179, 217 

Williams, Sir M 139, 141 

Wise, Rabbi Isaac M. .42, 47 

Witsius. 35, 45 

Worcester, Council of. . . 172 
Worms, Council of 171 

York, Council of 172 

Zacharias, Pope, 79 

Zwingli. 233 



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